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confiscation 



RU OUTJjIHE 



WILLIAM GREENWOOD 



Those palaces on the Nob Hills of these United States are 
the toadstools of the decay that is going on in tbis Republic 
to-day.— Page 42. 



f 



SAN FRANCISCO 

JAMES H. BARRY, PRINTER, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET 

1895 






COPYK'GIITED 1895, BY THE AlTHoR. 



PREFACE. 



The Emancipation Proclamation has only 
718 words. 

Lincoln's address at Gettysburg has only 266 
words. 

The works of Thomas Paine were not only 
one of the important factors that brought suc- 
cess to the struggle for Independence, but they 
were also largely instrumental in the Declara- 
tion itself being made. And those works, what 
were they? — mere pamphlets. 

Shakespeare, whose writings are said to be an 
education in themselves, can be had in a vol- 
ume not twice the size of " Progress and Pov- 
erty." 

Why, then, cannot a scheme of political 
economy, even w T hen it is a radical departure 
from our present system, be sufficiently out- 
lined for working purposes in a volume of this 
size, and also written so that it shall be intelli- 
gible to those to whom all such works should in 
a Republic be addressed; namely, the voter, 
who alone has the power to bring about the 
desired change? 

The late Professor Tyndall was both an origi- 
nal investigator of natural phenomena and a 



4 PREFACE. 

teacher who could make his discoveries as 
plain to the ordinary mind as he could to the 
scientist working in the same field as himself. 

Discovering a truth in Nature or in political 
economics is work only half done if the dis- 
coverer wishes to make it known to those in 
whose interest he claims to be working. 

Labor, iron labor, makes the scholar, says 
Emerson. 

Labor, iron labor, gave Tyndall the faculty 
that made him intelligible and interesting to 
the young, and the right to preside at a meet- 
ing of Humboldts. 

But there is pride of intellect as well as pride 
of riches, and none shows this pride as do the 
writers on political economy who have made it 
the " dismal science," instead of having made 
it the A, B, C of our mental furniture, as it 
should be with the people of a republic. 

Making a good use of our means in our home 
and business affairs is good economics. 

Making a poor use of them is bad economics. 

That is all there is to this word, whether it 
is our private affairs or those of the nation that 
are being considered. 

If we live up to our laws, and yet want and 
privation exist while there is more than suffi- 
cient for all, then the fault must be in those 
laws. 

Making a scapegoat of the foreigner for those 
conditions because he will not buy our wheat, 
or use a metal that we have an overplus of, 



PREFACE. O 

places us side by side with the witch-burner of 
old. We are just as ignorant in one way, as he 
was in another. • 

At his door who has been writing on this 
subject does the blame of this universal igno- 
rance of it belong. He takes up this plain, 
simple subject, and becomes an intellectual 
aristocrat and a snob of exclusiveness from 
that time on, and, like the aristocrat of wealth, 
will have nothing further to do with the com- 
mon people, cutting off all former connections 
by turning out a mass of intellectual mud that 
only leisure and education can penetrate. And 
dear to him is the dignity of bulk, the dignity 
of paunch, using, as he does, twenty words 
where three would do better work. The living 
and the dead of his species are alike in this 
hunt for the " Absolutely Pure " to puff out 
their little dough. 

Dissecting " Co-operation," the writer of 
Progress and Poverty must drag the poor re- 
mains through over 800 words — almost enough 
to bury the single tax theory itself. Co-opera- 
tion means getting rid of the middlemen. 
With organized labor it means keeping out all 
whose admittance would cause a surplus of 
labor among those who have organized to pre- 
vent that as well as injustice by the employer. 
But what has become of that middleman and 
black-balled laborer? One is ruined and the 
other is a helpless chip that is drifting into — 
some State prison for forty years. 



6 PREFACE. 

Co-operation is the savior of some, but the 
ruination of others, and her plea of justifiable 
homicide cannot be accepted while this earth 
has more than enough for her own. 

Not a God-like wisdom, nor the assumption 
of it, is needed to either conceive a remedy for 
our present troubles, or to formulate laws for 
its application. Plain sense we most all have: 
let us use it then, and we will have no further 
use for either the bookworm or the logic chop- 
per. 



CONFISCATION. 



I. 

Running a republic under the economic laws 
of a monarchy must of necessity result in pro- 
ducing the same conditions — great wealth for 
some and great poverty for the rest. This 
may be a government by the people, but it cer- 
tainly is no longer a government for the people. 
Heretofore individual greed has had full swing 
in the United States, and naturally enough the 
ablest returned in possession of everything 
worth grabbing. And naturally enough, too, if 
a republic means a country owned by all its 
people, it cannot be a republic if it is owned 
by only a few. All the power of a country is 
bound to be in the hands of those who own it. 
If its wealth is in the hands of a few, its power 
is there with it. In the hands of a few it must 
be, if it would be a kingdom or empire. In 
the hands of all it must be, if it would be a 
republic. To insist on having the personal 
liberty that goes with a republic, and at the 
same time not to set a limit to the resources an 



O CONFISCATION. 

individual can own, is a contradiction. A re- 
public has economic laws that are essential to 
her existence. Any others mean her destruc- 
tion. And it is utterly out of the question for 
any political party to improve the conditions of 
the people, while they use the present economic 
laws as the basis of their proposed legislation. 

You must begin at the foundation. Individ- 
ual greed should be made to respect the right 
of others to exist, and made to conform itself 
to laws that are as necessary to the life of a re- 
public as is the ballot itself. The ballot, in fact, 
has lost its power. It is the key to a house we 
have lost possession of, and if we would regain 
possession and make the ballot something more 
than a mere symbol of a thing that is dead, 
we have no choice but to resort to the one 
process by which the resources of the country 
can be returned to its people, and the blight of 
poverty and pauperism that is settling down on 
the country and is becoming permanent can be 
removed — namely, confiscation. 

Man, in the beginning, seeing annihilation 
staring him in the face, combined and gave us 
the Government of the Tribe; out of that 
developed the Despotic form; out of that 
developed the Constitutional Monarchy, out of 
which developed the Republic, the highest type 
of them all; and this work of development must 
ever go on, if we would not lapse into former 
conditions. 

The founders of the republic could not have 



CONFISCATION. \) 

expected their work to so soon come to the 
Chinese halt that has overtaken it, until we 
now find ourselves floating on an ebbing sea 
back to the shores we thought we had forever 
left behind. 

The founders of the republic met the needs 
of their hour, and expelled the foreigner. We 
have failed to meet the need of our hour in not 
discarding the economic laws that were of that 
foreigner's bringing; the economic laws of 
the monarchist and despotic forms of govern- 
ment, that is making this republic a republic 
only in name; the economic laws of the mon- 
archist and despotic forms of government that 
has built up an aristocracy of wealth here as 
they have there, that must of necessity depend 
here for its existence as it does there, on the 
enslavement of the people. Do not let a mere 
word further deceive you. The word republic 
means a free people — we are slaves. For great 
revenue, be it of king or millionaire, has the 
same magician's wand — the overladen back of 
the enslaved toiler. 

In the face of our boasted intelligence what 
an appalling sight does this country offer to 
the All-seeing Eye. An abundance of every- 
thing, and people starving by the thousands. 
When our lawmakers in Washington learned 
that the death penalty was to be inflicted on 
those who were convicted of treason for trying 
to overthrow the established government in 
Hawaii, they said it must not be done, and 



10 CONFISCATION. 

busied themselves to save those people's lives. 
And during all their agitation to save these 
men who were to suffer a punishment that is 
meted out to such by all governments, thou- 
sands of their own people were perishing for 
the want of something to eat — not inhuman 
or hard-hearted, bat simply do not see how they 
can prevent it. There is no law by which they 
can stop starvation. The legislator in a mon- 
archy knows that poverty is inseparable from 
that form of government and are reconciled 
to it. 

Our legislators are reconciled to the same con - 
ditions. They do not see the incongruity of 
conforming the legislation of a republic to the 
economic laws of a monarchy. They do not 
know what a government by the people and for 
the people means. If they did, they would 
know that there was something wrong when 
one man has .$50,000,000 while another has not 
enough to get his shoes cobbled: and another 
has 50,000 acres of land, while others must be 
buried four in a grave. 

And none of the political parties shows a 
way of escape out of this miserable state of af- 
fairs, as a brief review of their positions will 
show. 

We once had the Free States and the Slave 
States, and these two terms were designative of 
two sections into which the country was then 
divided on the question of slavery. To-day we 
have " Free Coinage of Silver," '-'Protection.* - 



CONFISCATION. 11 

and " Free Trade." These three terms, Free 
Coinage of Silver, Protection, and Free Trade, 
are as truly designative of three different sec- 
tions into which the country is divided to-day 
on economic or industrial questions as were 
the terms Free States and Slave States designa- 
tive of two sections in the past. Thus the 
preponderating interest in one section is the 
mining of silver, and this interest is repre- 
sented by the Populist Party, who demands 
the coinage of more silver. The preponderat- 
ing interest of the second section, or East, is 
manufactures, and is represented by the Repub- 
lican Party, who demands protection.. The 
preponderating interest of the third section, or 
South, is agriculture, and is represented b} r the 
Democratic Party, who demands free trade. 
This is substantially correct, although the Pop- 
ulists seem to be as strong in the agricultural 
South as in the silver-producing West. The 
Populist Party, indeed, originated among the 
agriculturists of the South, and was the out- 
growth of discontent among the farmers; and 
in saying that Populism has its stronghold in 
the West, or silver-producing section, we sim- 
ply mean that the farmers' organization has 
been captured by the silver interest. They 
seem to think that their own prosperity is 
linked w T ith that of the silver producers, and 
that the free coinage of silver means the salva- 
tion of both. With this political maneuvering, 
however, we have nothing to do. There are 



12 CONFISCATION. 

three political parties in the field, each with 
the preponderating interest of some section in 
charge, which it is bound to see through regard- 
less of the interests of the other two. The in- 
dustrial rivalry that is going on throughout 
the whole world has entered these United 
States, and each of the three different sections 
are struggling to obtain legislation favorable 
to itself, with the same indifference to the in- 
terests of the others that is shown by France 
to England or by England to the United 
States. Even the naked savage has found that 
it is a good thing to have something to sell, and 
our agriculturists are brought into competition 
with territor}' the New World over where a 
plow or harvester was unknown ten years ago; 
and instead of having a monopoly in the 
European markets, as was the case a few years 
ago, where they could dispose of their surplus, 
they are now compelled to feed it to their hogs, 
w T hich, as a source of profit, ranks even now 
with the thing they are fed on. 

But we are not depending on foreign mar- 
kets for enough to eat and wear. Those things 
are here, not there. We may have lost the for- 
eigner as'a customer, but what prevents us from 
eating that which he refuses to buy. We look 
back a hundred or more years, and cry out in 
horror at the inhumanity of those then in 
power, in allowing human beings to be burned 
alive and living creatures to be torn to pieces 
on the rack. Those who will look back to 



CONFISCATION. 13 

these times will be no less astounded at the 
inhumanity and imbecility of those now in 
power in allowing starvation while food is ac- 
tually rotting for the want of consumers. The 
question, then, is, can we not formulate a pol- 
icy that will work harmoniously throughout 
the whole country for the benefit of all sec- 
tions and every individual? Can we not find 
some way out of the swamp into which the 
masterful greed of a few and the dense stupid- 
ity of their legislative tools have mired us? 

If we cannot, then let us submit with the 
best grace possible to our masters who know 
how to lay on the lash when their dividends 
are at stake. 

The resources of the United States have 
hardly been touched upon; but in less than a 
hundred years individual greed has done its 
work, and the people are bankrupt. They 
have been legislated out of everything, and the 
one function of our government, as at present 
conducted, is to see that this legislation is en- 
forced. Yes, it is beyond the reach of contra- 
diction that this government, that was founded 
in the interests of All, has degenerated into a 
merciless taskmaster, ever ready to beat into 
submission the slaves of the country, when 
their few owners give the word. 

But this treatment should be expected. It 
goes with ownership. Give me the ownership 
of men, and all else goes with the title — how I 
shall clothe, feed, and lodge them, and how I 



14 CONFISCATION. 

shall keep theni on the grind. Of course, the 
wise ones will say, Was it not our own chosen 
representatives who made all those laws that 
gave our resources and the people themselves 
over to the favored few, and must not we, the 
principals, grin and bear it, and live up to 
whatever contracts those representatives, our 
agents, made in our name? 

It is not, however, how we were despoiled, 
but how we are to recover the plunder, that is 
interesting us just now. Is there a way out of 
the night of despair ? is the question that should 
be met, and, if possible, answered. Finding a 
way out of a difficulty is one thiDg, however, 
and having the courage to take it is another. 
Modern surgery has discovered much, but 
without the courage to use the knife mankind 
would not have been the gainer. The prayer 
meeting has its uses, but those who expect to 
obtain political or industrial deliverance in that 
quarter can set out their rain-gauges and go 
there; but those who know the nature of the 
fellow who has been grabbing all in sight will 
make him let go in the old-time way by using a 
force superior to his own — a force that he will 
feel when it comes down, supposing the power 
to feel is left in him. 

We have no hatred of the rich — nor love of 
the poor, for that matter. They are both fish- 
ers for gain, and one gets it, and the other 
don't; but his basket is just as large. But we 
are a lover of justice, and if one is too much 



> CONFISCATION. 15 

for the other would handicap him, and thereby 
make the struggle for existence more even for 
both. The weakling will always be a weak- 
ling, whatever laws are passed for his benefit, 
and the drudgery of the world w r ill ever be his 
portion; from it he can never escape, but he is 
entitled to his life, and if the able denies him 
what is necessary to it, then Justice must step 
in and take his part. 

Volumes could be padded in showing how 
this can be done, but w T e can demonstrate in 
this brief work how poverty can be obliterated 
as a feature of our national life, and if it does 
not make justice more even-handed for all, and 
the people of this country as prosperous as any 
on earth, then the fault must be in the plan it- 
self, and not in the resources which we possess, 
for of those we have enough to empty every 
poorhouse in the land, and eighty-five per cent, 
of the jails and penitentiaries. 

Let our wrongs be righted without physical 
force, by all means. History, however, has 
no encouragement for such a hope. The con- 
tentions with those on top have ever been of 
the blood-red order. Power once obtained has 
never been surrendered only through con- 
quest. The ballot should do much, and had it 
been in use in the past history might have 
had less of blood in it, as it should have less of 
it in the future. But the ballot for a long- 
number of years has, like a great many stom- 
achs of late, been working on wind — the wind 



16 CONFISCATION. 

of the Protectionist, the wind of the Free 
Trader, and the wind of the latest cure-all, the 
fellow who is hunting a market for his silver. 

If something substantial to work on is not 
soon given to this man with the ballot, he will 
drop it — and then let the blame of it rest with 
the fools and rascals who have been deluding 
him so long. 

The average man makes a better soldier than 
he does a vcter. He can get the range of an 
object easier than he can comprehend an eco- 
nomic truth — this one. for instance: If the 
capitalists have obtained possession of the 
money issued in the past, what is to prevent 
them from getting possession of all that will 
be issued in the future? His answer will be 
to issue more. He has been told so by his 
political mentor. When the man with the bal- 
lot loses confidence in this mentor, he will start 
a game of his own, and then the jig will be up 
with that idiot. We use the word idiot advis- 
edly here. When a tax was assessed against 
the incomes of the rich, this driveler would 
score a point gained in favor of the people. 
This claim of itself shows the institution to 
which he should be consigned. 

Victoria. Empress and Queen, rules a coun- 
try where pauperism is steadily on the increase. 
and the potter's field received the bodies of 
eighty of her subjects that were frozen to death 
in London in four days of January last. Yet 
the rich have been paying an income tax in 
that country for generations past. 



CONFISCATION. 17 

When the rich merchant, or rich anything 
else, insures what he is dealing in, he adds the 
cost of his policy to the thing he sells. The 
income tax is but another premium, and he 
tags that on where he pinned the other. The 
laborer has always paid the expenses of the 
rich, and always will. The laborer can never 
dictate terms to the rich. The labor leaders 
even have come to recognize the hopelessness 
of the unequal contest. The power of the rich 
to do as they like can never be destroyed while 
they are allowed to retain the riches that gives 
them this power. A readjustment and a limit 
set to the amount an individual can own is the 
only remedy. And the sooner that unassail- 
able truth is recognized and acted upon, the 
sooner will you get rid of the lobbiest and the 
pauper. 



II. 



We need more money per capita, say some 
more would-be leaders, who have found the 
only way out of the land of bondage. Increase 
the currency to $50 per capita, and business 
and prosperity will once more fill the land. 
Money has become scarcer, they continue, and 
therefore dearer. Those who contracted mon- 
etary obligations last week find that they are 
now paying more for the use of that money 
than it was worth when the debt was made. 



18 CONFISCATION. 

This is a hardship on the borrower, and can be 
prevented by increasing the amount of money 
in circulation. 

This is the very essence of what is claimed 
by those who are for increasing the volume of 
money in circulation. Money has changed in 
value, and those who are mortgaged, or other- 
wise under interest-paying obligations, have 
found that money is scarcer, in this instance 
through contraction of the currency, and there- 
fore harder to get. 

There should certainly be enough money 
issued for the smooth carrying on of the coun- 
try's business, and when they determine the 
amount necessary, it should be put in circula- 
tion at once. But stopping money from fluc- 
tuating in value is another thing. 

The man who buys a barrel of flour one day 
for $4.00 may find that it is worth only $3.50 
the day after. The man who borrows money 
at 7 per cent, one day may find it worth only 
6i the day after. 

To prevent these fluctuations in the value of 
either money or commodities is a legislative feat 
beyond the power of mortal man. And when 
we see our Legislator trying to regulate the 
value of anything that one man has to sell to 
another, we are no longer surprised at his try- 
ing to regulate the weather by exploding pow- 
der in the air. Our Mark Twains and Bill 
Nyes are flat indeed, when compared to that 
straight-faced clown, the American legislator, 



CONFISCATION. 19 

who would give an unchangable value to either 
the shoes we wear or the money we use. 

This whole question of currency has as little 
to do with the prevailing misery as the miss- 
ing button off your vest would have to do with 
your being frozen to death. England not only 
has enough money to carry on her own busi- 
ness, but also has $15,000,000,000 to lend to 
outsiders. It is not the wealth of a country, 
but how it is distributed, that tells the story. 



The single taxers, of whom Henry George is 
the great apostle, are also claiming the floor, 
but a patient hearing finds the distressed turn- 
ing away for relief that the single taxer can 
not give. They are cultivating a century 
plant, and while we are w T aiting for it to bloom 
three generations of human beings will have 
met their millionaire masters and taken their 
place in the line that leads to the soup house 
and the pauper's grave. 

The masterly logic of these reformers is the 
work of serene-tempered and well-fed men, 
whose cosy library with windows facing to the 
south, and the open fire-place with its soothing 
and cheerful glow, is conducive to the develop- 
ing of a red-tape reform that must be an in- 
spiring subject for discussion at an afternoon 
tea. Because they are well fed is the reason 
why they can play a waiting game, but the 
despairing and maddened people, for whose 
benefit this single tax contract, with its long 



20 ? - noN. 

deferred pay: n ent, is ring drawn up, will b 
as little use for it as they will have for the 
plate-glass window when their bread riots be- 
gin. 

The land owner alone is the one these one- 
horse-chaise reformers would start their Dob- 
bin after. The large land-owner should be cut 
down in his holdings, and their plan is jus: 
one to fix him and make him let go. They will 
tax him in such a way that he cannot pay, and 
then they have got him. they tell us, as they 
jog along over their pleasant high- 

H :w, why this dilly-dallying with the large 
lane or any one else, that has some- 

thing that he should surrender for the general 
. 

When 30,000 acres of land by 

one man is wrong, then rong to let him 

.ere was one drop of the John 
Brown blood in this crew of house-gown and 
:pper refon: :>uld go into the 

ip, and never let up on their open 
warfare until what belonged to the people was 
rued to them. 
Taxing an to make him give up 

plunder! 

When hunger and plenty is found side 

lution can there be but to set a limit 
what the >ve rendowed can tag with his name, 
and to put his forfeited surplus where the un- 
derfed can, with reasonable labor, get posses- 
sion of : 



CONFISCATION. 21' 

If the single taxer is given plenty of time, 
he will accomplish something, undoubtedly, 
but the whole thing will be over long before 
poor old Dobbin gets on to the scene. 



The millionaire land-owner and the million- 
aire capitalist are as much out of place in a re- 
public as is the man with a title; and the laws 
which permitted the growth of the two first are 
the primary cause of the disgraceful conditions 
that exist in this Republic to-day. When we 
know that people in actual want are to be found 
in every section of the United States, we ought 
to be able to say that it is Nature that has failed 
us for the time being; but it is not Nature, but 
the wretched laws of man's own making that 
are at fault. Had we the economic laws that 
belong to a republic, instead of those that be- 
long to a despotism, the foreign markets could 
be entirely closed to us, and all our people 
would still have enough of all things that are 
necessary to life. And those able men who 
have gone into the domain of natural philos- 
ophy, to see what they could find to advance 
and benefit the human race, have found so 
much, and brought about such a change in the 
industrial world, that they have completely be- 
wildered our political philosophers, who have 
been utterly unable to make room for the labor- 
saving inventions and discoveries of those men, 
until the confusion and distress resulting from 
the incompetence of our political philosophers 



22 CONFISCATION 

to adjust the laws to meet the changed condi- 
tions are beginning to make us look upon the 
inventors as our enemies, instead of our bene- 
factors. 

The work of the world consists principally 
in raising food and manufacturing the things 
w T e wear, and the forwarding of both to the con- 
sumer. And the great inventions of the Mc- 
Cormicks, Howes, Fultons, Stephensons, and 
the rest have made this work so easy that the 
labor done in two months now is equivalent to 
the labor done in twelve months a few years 
ago. That is why they are great inventions. 
Yet our law-makers are still legislating for con- 
ditions that disappeared with the ox-goad, hand 
loom, lapstone, and sickle, and are continually 
trying to devise ways and means by which the 
labor of the country can be kept employed the 
year round. What doing? When they find 
out how to make you wear twenty pairs of 
shoes at a time, they will have found out how 
to keep the shoe factories running the } r ear 
round, not before. 

The natural philosopher can overcome ph} T si- 
cal difficulties; the political philosopher cannot 
overcome economic ones. 

We would reside on a certain hill were it not 
for the climb. A Hallidie lays his cable, and 
puts us at the top without further trouble. We 
find Egypt cutting into our cotton market, Ar- 
gentine into our wheat market, France and 
Germany have shut their doors against our 



CONFISCATION. 23 

meats, and England will not approve of silver. 
Many throughout this country find their very 
bread falling short through these conditions 
abroad, and the sufferers call in our political 
economists to help them to at least keep the 
necessaries of life within their reach. 

Of the various nostrums prescribed by these 
political quacks, two have been thoroughly 
tried, but the aggravating results have only cut 
the eye-teeth of the humbugged; and when 
they take the field themselves as political econ- 
omists, they will have a preparation of their 
own that will be bitter enough to the taste of 
those to whom they will apply it. 

III. 

What rainbow-chasers these McKinleys, Wil- 
sons, and J. P. Joneses are ! Do they not see 
this country with its limitless resources? Do 
they not see the surfeited millionaire, and the 
hungry laborer with his starving dependents? 
Do they not see that they must break down the 
one if they would build up the other? Do not 
these miserable bunglers see that this noble 
ship of the fathers is foundering because of 
her uneven load? 

See the imbeciles rushing hither and thither 
in frantic despair ! This one with his wad of 
wool to stop a leak that does not exist; that one 
with his tears and kisses falling on the silver 
charm that hangs about his neck; this other at 



24 CONFISCATION. 

the masthead high shouting to foreign shores 
for help we do not need. 

Never did the black flag of a Csesar or a Na- 
poleon IIT. bear down on a richer-laden prey 
than this helpless hulk and its jabbering crew. 



Through Confiscation, and Confiscation alone, 
can we restore the conditions that are neces- 
sary to the life of the Republic. 

Confiscation is a forbidding word. We asso- 
ciate it with the sheriff's writ, and with the 
idea of distress in some form, and with bloody 
war itself, its greatest field of operation. It is 
one of the few words in the vocabulary of 
Might. Without Might there would be no such 
word ; and the weak have ever been the prey of 
both. But it is a plain word. As plain as are 
the conditions under which we are now living. 
There is no mistaking its meaning. And hav- 
ing the same momentous work -ahead of us — 
of gaining our freedom, and throwing off the 
yoke of our latest master — as that which con- 
fronted the founders of the Republic, we can- 
not go to a nursery rhyme for a word to de- 
scribe that work. 

It is the way in which Might is to restore our 
lost liberties and resources that is of the grav- 
est concern to all, and not the word used to de- 
scribe the result of what Might shall do. 

Justice is due. But how is it to arrive? By 
way of the ballot, or over the same blood- 
stained road in use before the ballot was dis- 
covered? 



CONFISCATION. 25 

If the plundered and starving have lost faith 
in the ballot, and sheer want has brutalized 
them until they see no way but the brute's way 
of saving themselves, then place the horror of 
it all at the doors of incompetence and grasp- 
ing greed where it belongs. 

It is a plain word. As plain as are the con- 
ditions under which we are now living. As 
plain as is the wide-spread want and hunger 
that is in this land to-day, while there is more 
than enough for all. 

And those who have gained possession of 
our resources are responsible for this hunger, 
and are enemies just as much as if they were 
invaders. Whatever progress external foes 
could make in landing on these shores would 
be only temporary, and not a blow could they 
strike, or a step make, without our knowing it. 
Not so the millionaire. His is the work of the 
thief in the night, and we know nothing till 
his work is done. And then, because we 
would resort to the same process of recovery 
that we would in the case of any common 
enemy, we hold back, forsooth, because that 
process is called Confiscation. 

Those whom we find to be inimical to the 
life of the republic will look upon an anarchist 
as a cooing dove compared to the man who 
would advocate Confiscation. They have 
nothing to fear from the anarchist, except a 
stray bomb now and then, for they know full 
well that the "plain " people will always stand 



26 CONFISCATION. 

between them and that wild-eyed dreamer of 
the impracticable. 

What those favored people think, however, 
does not interest us. What is of more con- 
cern to us, and to all others who have no doubt 
but what there is something wrong in the pres- 
ent scheme of things, is that the doctrine of 
Confiscation should be first understoood before 
it is rejected. If it is found to conflict with 
law and order; if it is found to obstruct in 
any way the material welfare necessary to any 
man, woman, or child in the United States; if 
it takes from any man, woman, or child in 
these United States a solitary privilege or right 
that is essential to their well being; if it 
makes one more tramp, convict, or outcast of 
the street: if it fills one more pauper's bed or 
potter's grave, then our search is not ended, 
for it is only another delusion, and of them we 
have more than enough already. 

If, on the other hand, it does away with 
hunger and rags in a laud of plenty. Does 
away with the cause of ignorance, namely, pov- 
erty. Does away with the cause of eighty-five 
per cent, of crime, namely, poverty. Does 
away with the cause of strikes and rioting, 
namely, poverty. Destroys the power of one 
man to bribe one or fifty, and with his thumb 
at his nose defies the law to reach him. Makes 
robbery of the people by way of the lobby a 
thing of the past, and makes unnecessary a 
third house for the investigation of the other 



CONFISCATION. 27 

two, a stage we have already reached. Does 
away with the millionaire and his charity — the 
beggar and Irs need of it. Gives the condi- 
tions which makes individual and national im- 
provement possible, and securing every such 
national improvement by making all the people 
its willing defenders, which they are far from 
being now in their hunger and wretchedness. 
Makfis employment easy to obtain, with just 
wages in return for the labor done, putting 
within the reach of all, those comforts and lux- 
uries, which, in this age of the world with its 
skill for quick and easy production, should be 
looked upon as a matter of course, but which 
in fact are unknown to a large part of the 
working people of the country. 

If Confiscation, then, can do all this, why 
should it not be made to supersede all other 
policies that have been tried, and all those that 
are now courting public favor, but which, like 
the rest, are based upon unrepublican econo- 
mic laws, and must end, therefore, like the rest, 
in failure and disappointment ? 

With our resources restored to the people, 
which can be done only through Confiscation, 
prosperity would diffuse itself throughout the 
country as easily as the sun scatters its light. 

We will now outline, as briefly as we may, 
what will be the effects of Confiscation, and 
what Confiscation means. It means the limit- 
ing OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL FORTUNE [iN THE 

United States to $100,000. 



28 CONFISCATION. 

And the excess of every fortune now exceeding 
that amount to be confiscated and turned into the 
public treasury. No exceptions to be made as 
to persons or the thing owned. Money, land, 
buildings, bonds, stocks, everything — where- 
ever an excess is found, confiscate. 

The anarchist! It is justice and the intelligence 
of the people that these new tyrants dread. The 
equity of this reform should be evident to 
every one who knows that this government 
was originally established for the good of all. 
And the time has now come when the work 
commenced in 1776 should be again resumed, 
and our latest masters got rid of some way or 
other. 

But, it will be asked, will not a fifty times 
millionaire give employment to as many men 
as will 500 men with $100,000 each. No. Not 
even if madam and himself are at home from 
toadying up and down through Europe in 
search of a princeling. (Stop this fad of the 
spoiled darlings of fortune and you stop a leak 
through which over $1,000,000,000 of American 
money has already disappeared. We will sus- 
tain this with facts in its proper place.) One 
million dollars divided among ten men will do 
ten times more good than if owned by one 
man. One million dollars ow T ned by one man 
is like one million acres owned by one man. 
He will certainly make some kind of use of his 
acres, but the very best he can do will be as 
nothing compared to the use a thousand men 



CONFISCATION. 29 

or more can make of them. It is the same 
with a million of money. And an enterprise 
calling for one million dollars of capital can be 
carried on just as well if that capital is owned 
by fifty men, as it could if it is owned by one 
man. We will have more to say on this point 
before we are done. 

The American millionaire has also the power 
to squander outside of our own territory that 
which is much needed in his country. And 
the thousands in money which he sends to 
Europe for something to hang on his walls 
would pay for a much needed improvement in 
some city or town in the country where the 
money was made. 

The American millionaire is a detriment to 
his own country any way you take him, al- 
though a .great many people are thoughtless 
enough to say that we cannot get along without 
the millionaire. The capital which he controls 
will be still here after he is legislated out of 
office, just as it is when Father Time gathers 
him in. 

He not only injures our country by taking 
its capital away, but he checks development by 
tying up the resources which he has got title 
to. He incloses thousands of acres for a few 
deer or some such to browse in when the 
whole should be thrown open, and those in need 
of homes allowed to settle it. There can be no 
doubt but what this is a great waste of land 
when we remember how rapidly those reserva- 



co>~fiscat: 

- rre settled when they were thrown open 
within the last few years. Those large incis- 
ures may or may not contain land suitable for 
thosT in need of homes, but a look through the 
: " Lhills and mountains of California will show 
that homes can be made among the rocks and 
cany us even — when people are forced to it. 
And it is this j millionaire to com. 

pel : that we have : 

nd not i talitj :he land 

in hi . ne preserves Strip him of this 
er and i for his 

wall/ 7 the leei park ' and the ** princeling 
imp;--. - the people will once more h 

mc .._■ theii own. Let him retain it, and 
he will soon drive us to beat the bash for game 

is he has alrea 
bag^ vealth we produced. Let him re- 

tain it, and fa lies of fencing may or 

may not inclose worthless land, but it will not 
be the land, but the : - re resented by the 
leer inside rill set as to thinking of the 

b and of the pauperism and 
bis -'. : d gings where- 
- :und. Let him retain it a little 

_-;. and the soldier, who is steadily 
ij on to the scene, will be here, 
. - - •-. - help ourselves will be 
gor_T for the gri] - it our throaJ 

Those who are watching the mighty drama 
that is slowly unfolding itself on the world's 
of to-:* ... the -:rike of last 



CONFISCATION. 31 

summer with what astounding ease a great 
people can he subjugated by a few disciplined 
men. And we no longer labor under the mis- 
take of thinking that because they are our own 
people they will not shoot to kill. Put your 
brother — aye, your son — into a uniform, and 
he needs but the word to snuff you out as 
quick as he would a red handed Apache. He 
has been drilled to believe that he himself 
would be snuffed out if he disobeyed. And 
this result of disobedience is ever present with 
the man in uniform, and has been engraved 
into his very soul, for his only God is the drum- 
head court-martial. This is the creature that 
has made the aristocratic parasite a fixture in 
Europe, and he is all that is needed to make 
the same curse a fixture in our own country, 
and every attempt to increase his number 
should be resisted with all the means in our 
power, until the plunder he is wanted to guard 
shall have found its way back to its rightful 
owners. 

IV. 

We will now show how the principle of Con- 
fiscation should work in the case of railroads. 
This class of property, by the way, should never 
have been given over to private ownership, to 
begin with. They are for the convenience of 
the public, just as much as any harbor or navig- 
able river ever was. And if it was right that the 



32 CONFISCATION. 

founders of the Republic should, in the inter- 
ests of the country's commerce, deny the right 
of private ownership in our navigable waters, 
then it was wrong to concede the right of pri- 
vate ownership in railroads. As for the cap- 
ital to build them with, it was just as easy to 
get it for that purpose as it was to get capital 
to dredge harbors, build lighthouses, build forts 
or the Stanford University. The first railroad, 
or even the twentieth, never suggested to the 
leaders of those times any idea of what this 
rival of the winds and tides would develop into 
in a few short years. Individual greed has so 
little time to spare from the building of its own 
nest that politics in the United States, where 
the common good should be the aim of all 
legislation, has become a hand-to-mouth affair, 
and the morrow must shift for itself. Busy 
hunting for spoils, like our own incompetents 
of to-day, the legislators of the past cared noth- 
ing for the morrow: and, without knowing 
what they were doing really, surrendered a 
principle to the railroad projectors that was but 
a spark at the time, but which has spread until 
we find the blaze devouring us to-day. The 
statecraft that never found time to look beyond 
the ringing of the curfew bells would have 
starved to death had it to compete with those 
who were then working the lobby, while it was 
splitting hairs over the Constitution and ac- 
cepting the " stuff" that would do it " the most 
good." Xo class of propertv shows the justice, 



CONFISCATION. 33 

and therefore the need, of Confiscation as much 
as railroads. No class of property has done 
as much toward absorbing and transferring the 
whole country into the hands of a compara- 
tively few men as railroads. But when Confis- 
cation gets through with these monarchs of all 
they survey, the town or section through which 
these railroads run will not find themselves like 
a sucked orange by the wayside. 

Taking the Southern Pacific Railroad, we find 
that it runs through Madera County, California, 
but it is doubtful if ten cents' worth of its se- 
curities are owned there. Madera County, 
then, has property within her borders that 
earns an income, not one cent of which goes to 
the county where it was earned.* The prop- 
erty is there, but the income from it is taken 
elsewhere. This is the one great flaw in our 
present economic life, and is the very root of 
our present troubles. 

The income from property is taken from the 
locality where it was earned. And the farmer's 
wagon sinks to the hubs for want of money to 
build good roads. And the laborer is robbed 
of the income that his labor earned, and he 
sinks his manhood at the soup-house door. We 
repeat it: The great defect in our economic life 
is the taking of the income from the locality where 
it was earned, and from the laborer, the source of 
it all. This does not mean that the laborer must 

*The railroad, of course, pays taxes to the county, but 
it would have to pay taxes even if it had no income. 



34 CONFISCATION. 

spend his income or wage? where it was n: 
It does not mean that the income from pro] - 
erty must be spent in the particular locality 
where the property is located. It does not 
mean, in short, that there shall be any restric- 
tions placed upon the individual in any way 
outside of limiting him to the owner-hip of 
$100,000. With that he can do as he likes, and 
go where he likes — title-hunting if he wishes. 
when he will be sure to find many bargains,. 
for it is our impression that there will be a 
slump in that market when the American mil- 
lionaire is no longer found among the bidders. 

To the United States Government must be 
left the winding up of the affairs of the rail- 
roads, and all other paper-represented property. 
as it is obvious that she can do it much better 
than the many States of which the country is 
composed: and the before mentioned excess 
shall then be turned over to the different coun- 
ties where the railroads are located, each county 
to receive in proportion to the value of the 
railroad property within her limits, and not 
according to the number of mile 

President Huntington does not own all the 
jks and bonds of the Southern Pacific, but 
illustration sake we will assume that he 
does. I- it not plain then that Confiscation. 
yhen it gets through with this railroad owner, 
will have made the counties where it is loo 
its owners, both of the property itself and the 
income which it earns"? Is this Government 



CONFISCATION. 35 

ownership of railroads? That term as now un- 
derstood means buying the railroads, and it is 
the millionaire we are trying to get rid of, but 
he is still here if you take his railroads and 
give him something better. We have already 
said that private ownership should not have 
been allowed, and we would now confiscate 
them without any reservation whatever if it 
were not for the thousands of small investors 
in their securities and as these small investors 
must not be injured, we are compelled to leave 
the railroads in the hands of private owners, as 
buying out even these small owners would 
cause a national debt such as we had better 
steer clear of. But it is not essential to the 
welfare of the people that the Government 
should own the railroads. The point we wish 
to bring out is, that the wealth and resources 
of the country has found lodgment in a few 
hands, whereas it should be scattered among 
all the people, and as long as they are getting 
the benefit it will matter little to them whether 
they own it in their Governmental capacity or 
as individuals, and the counties even are not to 
hold on to the forfeited excess, but must dispose 
of it as fast as the people are able to buy. 

But Huntington not owning all the securi- 
ties of the railroad of which he is president, 
we send for persons and papers and confiscate 
as fast as the excess turns up, and distribute as 
described above. " Oh my! oh my! " comes a 
voice from out of the woods. " Is not this 



36 CONFISCATION. 

robbery? " No ; nor armed revolution either, 
but a peaceable solution of the question. Who 
owns this earth anyway? 

When persons and papers are sent for, and 
one of the interrogated is found to possess, 
say, $100,000 in money and securities, $100,000 
of real estate, and $100,000 of other good things, 
the right of choice should be given him as to 
the $100,000 he wishes to retain. For the lim- 
iting of every individual fortune to $100,000 
does not mean $100,000 of one kind of prop- 
erty and $100,000 of another kind, etc., but 
$100,000 all told. 

Those of our own country are, of course, 
amenable to our laws, but many of the securi- 
ties of the road under consideration are owned 
abroad, and persons and papers there are not 
responsive to our subpoenas. If it brings dis- 
aster to a countiT to lose the income made 
there, are we not close to one of the causes of 
the wretched want that is confined to no sec- 
tion of this land as we draw nearer to the man 
abroad, who is fattening from income that is 
drawn from all over this country? 

Repudiation is unnecessary here. Simply 
stop the interest on all American securities owned 
out of the country. 

This we have a perfect right to do, and when 
it is done the foreign holders will be on their 
way here as fast as the first ship can take them. 
The despised steerage and all will be full of 
him. 



CONFISCATION. 37 

Here we are once more obliged to use a 
word that is as hateful to us as it must be to 
every one who has probed the wounds of this 
bleeding country in the hope of finding their 
cause. And probe where we will, and how we 
will, it is Bonds; always Bonds — the interest 
bearing bonds. And standing around are the 
hyena millionaires, from far and near, lapping 
their income from the dying form whose first 
breath was the immortal Declaration. 

Gas Bonds, Water Bonds, Sugar Bonds, Flour 
Bonds, Telegraph Bonds, Railroad Bonds, 
Bonds, Bonds, Bonds. 

School District Bonds, Road Bonds, Munici- 
pal Bonds, County Bonds, State Bonds, and 
United States Bonds — chief offender anion 
them all, whose issue is left to the sweet will 
of one man — the political freak now in the 
White House. 



But we always get the money when the 
foreigner gets the bonds. That is a lie. Here 
is some sample evidence of it. 

When our parasite hears of another large 
jewel reaching London from the African 
mines, he says he must have it for madam's 
tiara, and taking a small matter of $500,000 or so 
of securities, he goes over, and when we next 
see him the securities are gone. But has he 
money in their place? None whatever. Mad- 
am's tiara is safe, but this country is not one 



DO WPISCATION. 

cent of money the richer by the transaction. 

And when it is time for a husband for Miss 
Parasite, the two old birds start over with 
bulging grip to get a mate for the sweet dam- 
sel — for she is sweet, as they all are. bless 
them, whether they belong to the millionaire's 
brood or to the laborer's — and it freezes our 
blood when we think of what is sure to happen 
if the dread machine gets to work here as it 
did over the way — to get, we say. a mate for 
the damsel, and when he is found there must 
be money down and this money is obtained in 
exchange for the bonds, and remains in the 
same country where the bonds and titles are. 

This has been a losing transaction all round, 
for, alas, the dear one herself goes over in a 
few days, and when we next hear of her she 
will be calling on her big brother to go and 
thrash the whelp that our money purchased. 

It does not look like business to make pur- 
chases abroad with income producing prop- 
erty. But when they buy. say $50,000,000 of 
government bonds at a clip, as did the late 
Win. H. Vanderbilt, they turn the interest as 
fast as it comes in into more income producers, 
and this leaves their cash-till comparatively 
empty, so that when they need money quick, 
for there is much competition among this gen- 
try, as in the case of a big jewel or a princeling, 
they have no option but to be up and away, 
and our securities being pie to them over there 
they grab a lot, and then the rush begins. 



% CONFISCATION. 39 

Nevertheless there must not be the semblance 
of injustice done to these foreign investors in 
our securities when they arrive here to make 
terms. We have the right to stop the interest, 
but the securities themselves we must redeem. 
But redeeming them all at once in gold being 
out of the question, and as that is the only kind 
of coin that is now acceptable to the foreigners, 
they must either wait until we get enough of 
gold, or until they think better of silver, and 
are willing to take that metal in part payment, 
and in the meantime while they are making 
up their mind, about it they must accept the 
best we are able to give them, namely non-inter- 
est bearing bonds. 

It is against the grain to bring the unsavory 
Bond on to the boards again. But looking at 
him closely, as he now appears, you will notice 
that he is well broken, and as we have no better 
we must use him to bring in the rest of the 
untamed band to which he once belonged. 
Neither should our visitors complain about this 
form of payment. If all of our obligations from 
abroad were paid in coin, assuming that we 
had enough, it would fill Europe with idle 
money, and as we have always been a good 
customer, and always prompt in our payments, 
they should be reasonable, and admit that it is 
no worse to have idle bonds than it is to have 
idle money, so long as final payment is assured. 
Neither should they expect par value for what 
did not, in many cases, cost them fifty cents on 



40 CONFISCATION. 

the dollar. We will pay them market value ; 
no more. And do not imagine that these people 
have been kept waiting very long to find out 
these terms. For so positive are these leeches, 
here and elsewhere, of being able to maintain 
their hold that those we have just finished with 
will not make a move to come here until the 
New Bill of Human Rights has become the law 
of the land. 

And this foreigner whom we are done with, 
so far as his power to injure us goes, is the 
counterpart of our own millionaire, and the 
scowl with which lie leaves these shores means 
another crunch of the iron heel on the necks of 
his own slaves, and it is only the magnitude of 
the work that is before us, which none but the 
blind will deny, in the subduing of our own 
masters, that makes it a sad necessity to refuse 
our aid to the oppressed the world over. One 
thing is certain however: whether Bunker Hill 
led to the fall of the Bastile or not, the libera- 
tion of the slave in the New World will show 
the way to his liberation in the Old, and in 
this way do we render him a service, even if we 
cannot see our way to help him in any other. 



The foregoing should make plain how the 
principle of Confiscation will work in the case 
of railroads, and all other paper-represented 
property that can be, and is, owned elsewhere 
than where the property itself is found. 

And there is no need of interfering with or 



CONFISCATION. 41 

changing any of the functions of the different 
branches of our Government in order to make 
Confiscation a part of our organic law any more 
than there would be to increase the dut}^ on im- 
ported wool and to collect it. The machineries 
of the law making, judicial, and executive 
branches of our Government, are sufficient for 
any calls that Confiscation can make on them. 
Any other construction that may be put on what 
has been said heretofore or may be said here- 
after, is an error. If insisted on, what then ? 
Have we run up against the impassable? It is 
sufficient to say that what is ours is ours to 
change when the need is evident, and the Cons- 
titution itself is not an exception to the truth 
of this. 

The laws regulating the rising and the set- 
ting of the sun are not of our creating, and we 
cannot hasten or retard its coming and going- 
one iota of time, and we do not live in the age 
when it could be done. 

But the Constitution is a man-made thing, 
and when growth has made it a straight jacket 
then the time for ripping has come. 

VI. 

Once more resuming our pursuit of the mil- 
lionaire, whom we have dispossessed of his 
railroad plunder, we find the chase taking us 
into town, where Confiscation will find many 
problems which it alone can solve — where it 



42 CONFISCATION. 

will find his sixteen story building, for his hours 
of plotting, and his suburban palace for his 
hours of ease, and the hiving humanity between 
over whom he had to walk to reach either. 
Those palaces on the Nob hills of these United 
States are the toadstools of the decay that is 
going on in this Republic to-day. 

The master crime of all ages was the building 
of those pyramids on the Egyptian sands, for 
they were useless, but the whim and the slaves 
and the lash of power were there, and the pyra- 
mids went up. 

Let us see to it that the power of our pyramid 
builders is destroyed before it gets beyond five 
million dollar palaces. 

When we apply the principle of Confiscation 
to the millionaire merchant, and turn his ex- 
cess into the public treasury, it will be no more 
destructive of the busines of which he has had 
all the profits than it was of the railroads. 
There will be more business done in the same 
line than ever, but more will be doing it, and 
consequently more will share in the profits. 
But if our object is to break up these fabulous 
fortunes, which mean certain death to our lib- 
erties, and whose blight has paralyzed progress 
and development, there should be no reason 
why we should not allow the present owners to 
take a hand in the breaking up. If the mer- 
chant, or other millionaire, would rather divide 
his millions among his relatives (barring his 



CONFISCATION. 43 

wife and minors) and friends, than to resign 
it over to the public treasury, let him do so. 
Our aim will be attained whichever happens, 
which is simply to bring about a better distri- 
bution of the wealth of this country, and we 
know of no way of making this even distribution 
that will compare with Confiscation. Socialism, 
in all its forms, means the surrendering of indi- 
vidual liberty, and is a retrograde movement, 
and the outcome of it can be nothing more or 
less than despotism of the very worst kind. 

Socialism enlarges the power of one indi- 
vidual over another. This is incompatible with 
the liberty that goes with a republic. Confis- 
cation says, $100,000 is enough. When you are 
found with more, it will be considered as proof 
that you have been taking an unfair advantage 
of some one, and the surplus makes you dan- 
gerous to the Avelfare of a republic, and is there- 
fore forfeited. There will be nothing more 
disagreeable, so far as the right of the individ- 
ual goes, in the enforcing of this proposed law 
than there is in the collection of taxes on in- 
comes. Cutting a fortune down to the $100,000 
limit may be considered a very disagreeable 
thing indeed, but when we are reminded that 
it is all done for the common good, we become 
reconciled at once, for we feel in our heart of 
hearts that the altar at which we can cheerfully 
make whatever sacrifices we are called upon to 
make, is the altar of our brother's welfare. 

The millionaire merchant will doubtless take 



44 CONFISCATION. 

advantage of his right to divide his busi- 
ness among his relatives and friends. Nat- 
urally they would give him the manage- 
ment, but the instinct to be master is 
strong within us all, and this would soon 
break up and scatter that dangerous accu- 
mulation. Then there would be more Mar. 
ket streets and Broadways. Every dollar 
of business that would be taken from the one 
or two principal thoroughfares, which is all 
that is now found in any of the cities, would 
mean an increase of value in the property of 
the street where this transfer business is carried 
on. And this increase in the value of city 
property would continue on out to the city's 
limits; and the limits themselves would be ex- 
tended further out to find room for habitable 
homes for the human beings that are supposed 
to live in the tenements. There can be no 
question but what merchandising would spread 
itself more over the cities if this limited own- 
ership of capital was in force: and this spread- 
ing out will give employment to all in bringing 
about the change; and prosperity, such as goes 
with plenty of work, will take the place of the 
wretched misery and want that now fill all the 
soup-house infected cities of the country. 
There will be no impairment in the value or 
need of the big " dailies " that [are published 
in these centres of population. They will 
simply be owned by more people and read by 
more, and the improvement in the times being 



*" CONFISCATION. 45 

of a stable and permanent character their cir- 
culation will be free from the rise and fall with 
whio.h they are now only to well acquainted, 
and the cheap-John business into which so 
many have gone, in the last few years, wheed- 
ling the ten cents and the dollars out of the 
child-like poor for worthless truck, can be 
thrown into the waste basket with the last offer 
of money for a Wall Street editorial. It is a 
mistake, by the way, to think we are a nation 
of readers. Man is an interesting animal where- 
ever found, and the desire to know what he has 
done and is doing is strong in us all, but even 
the little county paper is beyond the reach of 
many. The writer, who is a common toiler 
like the rest, finds the moving world a sealed 
book to him, for he cannot spare the needed 
dollar, and live. And those editors who will 
fiercely rend and tear, with all the power of 
their trained brains and skilled pens, at this 
vital need of our times may live to see the day 
when they too will believe this world is round, 
and that calling the original believers fools, 
thieves, scoundrels, rascals, and enemies to 
civilization was a repetition of an old mistake. 
It will be the day when they can be our guides, 
philosophers, and friends without the itching- 
palm stuck out behind. It will be the day when 
we can accept, without doubt or a curl of the 
lip, the admonition from the sixteen stories of 
steel, because we will then know, that the con- 
science of the man within is not itself all awry. 



46 CONFISCATION. 

To whatever cause the existing rot is charge- 
able the editor, at least, of all others, had the 
power to stop or check it, and failure to meet 
this great responsibility shows that the strut of 
this great personage is assumed, and that, like 
the rest, his necessities have been used by the 
master to bend and break him till he no longer 
dare call his soul his own. 

We can expect the screech of this helpless 
tool to fill the land as his desperate master nags 
him on in the revolution that is coming. 

VII. 

The mammoth hotel where the parasite of 
greater or lesser degree sojourns, w r here the 
popping corks of the costly imported champagne 
is heard, can still be a hotel, but the profits of 
its millions of invested capital must no longer 
be taken away by one or two men and it there- 
fore must have many more owners than it has 
now. It, too, must go to the people, if its mil- 
lionaire owner can find no more relations to 
share with and begins to suspect his " friends" 
of having had a hand in bringing about the 
upheaval. And if the ''plain" people never 
expect to enjoy the material results of the in- 
ventive wit of man as they are focused within 
its luxurious interior, they at least have some 
reason for being satisfied when they know that 
the profits will stay where they were made and 
help those who made them. This reference to 



CONFISCATION. 47 

hotels brings to mind a corroborative fact that 
proves the charge we make when we say that 
all these colossal fortunes are nothing more 
than the accumulations of able rascality of some 
form or other: bilking, cornering, lobbying, 
watering stock, or charging all the traffic will 
bear. 

The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was built 
by a speculator and floater of mining shares, 
and cost millions that he cashed in, after clean- 
ing out the simple minded laborer and servant 
girl, whom he deluded, with all the art known 
to his tribe, into believing that there was still 
more for their rainy day if they would only 
invest the little they already had. 

The law makes a felon of the rascal with the 
bogus gold brick, but that clumsy worker in 
the field of robbery does not get the returns 
which the scienced work of his brother pro- 
fessional brings in; therefore, when outraged 
law gives this petty malefactor the knock-out 
blow, the satisfied spectators, chattering about 
the majesty of something, depart and the curtain 
is rung down on another exhibition of what the 
American people are said to like — namely, hum- 
bug. Let us say in passing, that the American 
does not like humbug. Take the average of 
him as he is found in the little w T orld in which 
the routine work of his life is done and you 
will find him alert and close enough to deal 
w T ith, and that in all things in which he has his 
experience to rely on humbug (swindling) is 



48 CONFISCATION. 

practically impossible. But when he gets out- 
side of that experience, then, like the expe-, 
rienced traveler, he patiently submits to imposi- 
tion when resistance might mean a loss greater 
than the original. But even the traveler must 
have enough to continue on with, and when 
imposition reaches that stage resistance begins. 
So it will be with the man who is said to like 
humbug (robbery), when he finds humbug 
(slavery) closing in ou him. He too will resist. 
He did before and the rightful owners gained 
possession; as this same man, who is said to 
like humbug, will again recover possession of 
what is being so stealthily taken from him. 

When outraged law is asked to administer 
justice to the scoundrel who has deluded thou- 
sands into buying worthless mining shares or 
some such swindling bait, the victims are told 
that the whole swindle has been legitimized by 
the great seal of the state, and that their loss 
is the profits of a business conducted by a 
licensed trader. 

The man with the bogus gold brick goes to 
jail. The man with the bogus gold mine goes 
free. 

Why this difference when the principle in the 
two crimes is the same ? Is it because the mil- 
lionaire swindler has, in fact, been given rights 
under the law that is denied to the smaller fry ? 
Or is it because the larger bird of prey makes 
enough to go all around? Certain it is, how- 
ever, that Labor in its contests with Capital 



CONFISCATION. 49 

never got a decision in its favor yet — in time 
to be of any service. 

These wholesalers found the concubining of 
justice herself a necessity to the sucess of their 
rascalities and the delays and decisions of this 
harlot are but the echoes of her paramour's 
orders. And at no time does the debasement 
of this whited sepulchre display itself more 
than when the miserable and friendless crim- 
inal, whose crime is, assuredly, nothing more 
than the natural and to be expected outcome 
of the wrong and inexcusable crime developing 
conditions under which he is compelled to live, 
is at her altar for Justice, which She renders in 
ringing tones such as are never heard when 
Her paramour or his hirelings are before Her. 

When Labor does finally get a decision it is 
as worthless to it as is its pass-book on the gut- 
ted savings bank. 

Make the millionaire an extinct species, and 
the above assertion will not have logic to sus- 
tain it, and our courts will not be making 
terrible " examples " of the friendless, while the 
thief who ruins thousands is allowed to go free. 



There must be a radical change made in our 
laws if we ever expect to stop the sharks from 
preying on us. Our laws, like a hole in a fence, 
makes access easy, and the endless raids will 
never cease until the holes are stopped up. 
Constant watching, even with the light from 
former experiences, will all count for nothing 



•:> M CONFISCATION. 

while those holes and breaks a e left open. The 
persistent work of the crew of sharpers that 
hi s :Le Nicaragua canal steal in tow shows this 
necessity for a change in the economic laws of 
the country. Duplicating the scheme by which 
the Huntingtons and Oakes Ameses robbed the 
pie they submitted their prospectus for 
endorsement, and. lo. this whole coast grovels 
in the dust tc :hese new Moseses, who are to 
show them the way out of the wilderness into 
which their original.. Huntington, has led them. 
The canal should be built. But the estimated 
:■■ st oi the whole enterprise was $66] )(K 
according to their own expert, whose report, 
eight years ago. was published in "Harper's 
Weekly" — (published as news, by the way. but 
was an advertisement, and paid for as such. 
And that Julian Ralph stuff that appeared in 
that same weekly lately is more of that peculiar 
kind of news that is being constantly ground 
out by the capitalistic sharks to catch the un- 
wary, and was paid for by Spreckels — another 
Moses, that a come to the succor of our be- 
leaguered coast. The •'Journal of Civilization" 
is a fit organ for the millionaire corruptionist 
and the civilization that he is degrading) — and 
although they have gone over the ground again 
and again since that report was made, the max- 
imum estimate is still well inside .$100,000,000. 
Yet they now want to issue $1(K )0( . M) in 
stock: waut the people to guarantee principal 
and interest on $70,000,000 of bonds, and the 



CONFISCATION. 51 

right to issue $30,000,000 of bonds themselves. 
No wonder it was called a steal on the floor of 
the Senate. The public treasury will ever be 
the objective point of such wholesalers until 
the inducement is removed. Humanity, Honor, 
Patriotism, each and all are powerless before 
this all-conquering appetite of Individual Greed. 

What can such people as they care for this 
people, their country and its benign form of 
government? What use have such as they for 
a government that denies them the title that 
distinguishes their kind over the sea? 

Ay, what is to prevent them from using the 
vast power that goes with the wealth they are 
absorbing day by day, and to gratify the one 
unsatisfied wish of their purse-proud and selfish 
souls, and establish an Empire in place of the 
Republic? The Republic is but a shell and 
their work would be easy. 

The sophistry about the inalienable right of 
one man to crush another has had its day, and 
their hypocritical wail about civilization and 
this inalienable right, when these conscienceless 
rascals find their race is run, will be like the 
yelling of remorseless wolves that have been 
trapped and kicked into the vanishing distance. 

VIII. 

Understanding the principle of Confiscation, 
it will be easily seen how it must work in every 
individual case; and, therefore, it is needless 



52 CONFISCATION. 

to dwell on or elaborate its workings when it 
is applied to banks, breweries, sugar refineries, 
water works, gas works, street railways, etc. 

It will not destroy capital or business. It 
ma}' lesseu the value of real estate on the prin- 
cipal streets in large cities, and fall in values is 
not certain even there. It will trouble no one, 
however, if it does; not the present owner, 
even, for the value of property in favored 
localities is so great now that, however much 
one man can own now, he can own but a frac- 
tion of it under the proposed change. The 
owner of, say, a $400,000 building and lot on 
such a street as we are now considering may 
rind a shrinkage of $100,000. This will give 
him two partners instead of three. The shrink- 
age, therefore, will be to his liking; for, be it 
known, the aristocrat is a proud bird, and likes 
to flock by itself. And any designs against 
these two partners will be so fruitless of results 
to himself that a word in his ear now and then 
by his friends and well-wishers, about the pub- 
lic treasury, will end in his cultivating such a 
lamblike submission to the new dispensation 
that his eloquence, born of the new light and 
an awakened conscience, will make his titled 
sister over the way give up her bauble when he 
shows her the cost of its pomp to the struggling 
poor. 

Such will be the effect of the change on a 
m in who now carries the law in his pocket, 
when he hasn't it under his feet. 



CONFISCATION. 53 

Moving the laborer so far away from the 
centre of the city, and where there is room to 
build habitable homes, will be a serious objec- 
tion, it will be urged. They cannot get to their 
work on time without getting up at all hours. 
They can just have time to snatch a bite and 
be away again. And the whole of Sunday 
must be given to sleep they cannot get at any 
other time. 

They will be strangers in the near-by theatre, 
and the near-by library will be given up to the 
spider and his web, and the little garden of 
flowers that the once half-starved women have 
made a delight will be unknown to the worn 
out bread-winner, who will be the same old 
slave we promised to unshackle. Better clothes 
surely, and his home shows what it is to be a 
citizen of a republic that is a republic in fact 
as well as in name; but he has only time to 
snatch a bite and be away again. 

Will it never occur to those critics that we 
are here dealing with the greatest creation of 
the Almighty, and of all time — civilized man; 
and that we must make the conditions fit him, 
and not he the conditions. 

Everything he eats, wears, and uses in twelve 
months can be produced in two. Why, then, 
should he be compelled to labor twelve months 
for that which can be produced or made in 
one-sixth of that time? The reason is plain. 
When two laborers make an exchange there is 
wholesale robbery committed by the non-pro- 



54 CONFISCATION. 

ducing and idle parasites, while the fruits of 
Labor are on the way to those who alone are 
entitled to the whole. "And I," says the mil- 
lionaire, "say this robbery must go on, for I 
am an impossibility without it." That gnaw- 
ing canker never had any doubts as to where 
his surfeit comes from. And now that it has 
become a question of life and death with those 
he has been plundering, he should be dragged 
to the bar of justice and compelled to disgorge. 
And then labor, too, can come in on the eight 
and nine o'clock train, and be no later for its 
work than is the banker and the rest of his 
class that have had Labor under their heels so 
long. 

The capacity of the modern world to produce 
has entirely outstripped her capacity to con- 
sume, and trying to solve the economic prob- 
lems of the day, by further denial or ignoring 
of this fact, that should be self-evident, will be 
to build a structure with only half the founda- 
tion laid, and the inevitable collapse is bound 
to follow. 

There will always be plenty of room in the 
heart of a city for those who must live close to 
their work. 

' But the inventor has made night work, ex- 
cept by the parasitical leeches, unnecessary to 
the masses, a few hours of daylight being more 
than sufficient to supply all the needs of the 
country. We are not insisting, be it under- 
stood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of 



CONFISCATION. 55 

labor. No industry or occupation will be ham- 
pered or meddled with by doing justice to the 
laborer in the way proposed. The railroad 
employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can 
work on as now, but they must be compensated 
with just wages for the labor done. This will 
enable them to retire before decrepitude comes 
on, and orders are left for the poorhouse am- 
bulance to call on its way out. 

If eveiy city occupied three times the ground 
they now do, they would be gainers in all ways, 
and the moral degradation into which large 
sections of them have sunk would disappear 
with the conditions that produced them. 

The capacity of Europe to feed her people is 
being crowded, we are told, and then our flag 
is again run up, and during the whole exhibi- 
tion the Chinese system of bunking is quietly 
fastening itself in every city of consequence in 
the country. When those sorely pressed people, 
whose very existence is being threatened by 
these foreigners of a degraded civilization, 
awaken to the extremity of their danger, the 
bunking system and its introducers will find 
perjury and the habeus corpus mill powerless 
to save them. Mark this, however. The big 
capitalist imported the Chinaman, and his pow- 
erful influence has defeated all attempts to re- 
move him. It follows, then, that we must 
break up the big capitalist, if we ever expect to 
get at the thing behind him. 

We are not indifferent to the hardships of the 



56 CONFISCATION. 

oppressed of other nations, but we cannot get 
out of our own perplexities by saying that we 
are more favored in some way than are others. 
There are rocks ahead of ourselves, and watch- 
ing others going to pieces and firing congratu- 
latory guns will not help them or save us from 
a like fate. 

Whatever is in the near future for Europe, 
we, at least, have nothing to fear as to the 
capacity of our country to support all her people. 
And as it is with room for producing, so it is 
with room in which to live. There is plenty 
of both, and we should show ourselves worthy 
of the legacy left us by that handful of brave 
men who established liberty in our country, 
and insist on getting plenty of both before the 
armed hireling appears and it is too late. 



IX. 



We will now apply the principle of Confisca- 
tion to land, and we will see that Confiscation 
alone can undo the wrong that has of late 
become apparent to even the law makers in 
Washington. Up to within three years or so 
there were two ways by which farming lands 
could be obtained from the Government — hy 
homesteading and preempting. 

It is unnecessary to give the laws of either, 
but so fast was this class of land going that Con- 
gress repealed the preemption law. In other 
words, the amount you could obtain was cut 



CONFISCATION. 57 

down one half — from 320 acres to 160. What 
was more significant still of their barn door 
work after the horse was gone, they made the 
owning of 160 acres, regardless from whom it 
was got, private purchase or Government, a 
bar to the taking up of Government farm land. 
Prior to the repeal every citizen, and those in- 
tending to become citizens, had certain land 
rights, and owning half a State did not impair 
them ; which all goes to show that even this 
free and easy-going Government thought it 
about time to call a halt. But that was all it 
did do. As it was not necessary to give the 
laws under which the homesteader and pre- 
emptor got title, neither is it necessary to here 
ask how some men became owners of all the 
way from 1,000 to 60,000 acres, every acre of 
which was Government land years after Cali- 
fornia became a State. (We are using California 
facts. The rest of the Western part of the 
United States has an abundance of the same 
kind.) Suffice it to say, that they now own 
them; and suffice it too, that Confiscation is the 
only way by which we can dispossess them of 
plunder, that the welfare of the country 
demands should be returned ? In Confis- 
cation alone will the people find a servant who 
will not condone the past, but will follow up 
this breed of the grabber and restore what it 
finds, as it has already done with others of his 
tribe. 

It will be the re-discovering of America. 



58 CONFISCATION. 

Never did kind and beneficent laws show 
what men, with the right kind of stuff in them, 
could do, as did our land laws. Men who now 
own territory as large as some of the Eastern 
States started in without a dollar. They had 
something better. They had consciences that 
was good for any tests that the scoundrels could 
put them to. Never did gangs of "floaters*' 
help the political boss and ward-heeler rob the 
public treasury with greater success than did 
this other brand of the bastard citizen help his 
boss to hog the public domain. 

In the fertile valley of the Sacramento, land 
that would give one hundred and sixty acre 
homes to ten thousand families (fifty thousand 
people) is owned by one hundred individuals, 
an average of sixteen thousand acres to each 
owner. This is but a fraction of the valley and 
leaves out the owners of less than sixteen thou- 
sand acres. 

In the great San Joaquin valley, the laborer 
in search of work can walk for days in one 
direction alongside of fencing that incloses 
land belonging to one firm. And this immense 
fortune in land was obtained by robbery, just 
as the other millionaire fortunes were obtained. 

In the land office we see the miserable tool 
and his master. 

In the legislative halls we see the miserable 
tool and his master. 

And we see the leaves on Liberty's Tree droop 
and wither as these deadly borers do their work 
under the bark hp]ow. 



CONFISCATION. 59 

Up among the peaks and valleys of the Sierra 
Nevada lies the town of Mariposa, settled by 
gold seekers whose rich findings gave world 
wide fame to this hamlet among the mountains. 
Aluvial gold and quartz bearing gold was scat- 
tered with lavish hand through the surround- 
ing hills, and in the beds of the summer-dried 
streams. Generous laws of their own making, 
gave ample room, and the eager workers toiled 
on, forgetting the past hardships of the long 
journey where so many fell by the way, and 
the rugged hills became endeared to them as 
they marked out the shaded spots on their shelv- 
ing sides where their coming dear ones could 
look down on the busy scene below. But the 
camp follower with ready knife never finished 
the wounded brave quicker than did the "land 
grant" swindler finish Mariposa when her 
riches became the theme of every gold camp 
throughout the world. And to-day the big 
hearted and stalwart miner goes to fever-laden 
Africa and ice-bound Alaska, when there are 
whole mountains of the best mineral bearing 
land in the world in his own country, but which 
our present laws forbid him to touch. 

Our people should no more bow to a Mexican 
land grant title than to a superstition of their 
cave-dwelling ancestors. 

What matters it, however, in what way these 
colossal robberies were committed; by coffee- 
stained lie from Mexico, or perjured oath of 
faithless citizen; it has been done, and it is time 
for the undoing. 



60 CONFISCATION. 

Man developed the school house, and for this 
each is indebted to the other, and the mutual 
debt is acknowledged by making the school free 
to all. 

The Creator developed the Earth from chaos 
to the habitable home of man, free to all, but 
this debt is not acknowledged, and the many 
are driven into the highway by the few. 

Give us all the conveniences of modern life, 
railroads, telegraphs, etc., etc., etc., but give us 
back the land, that is our natural heritage as 
much as is the water we drink or the air we 
breath. 

Give us back this birthright, or take your 
railroads, and so on, and your civilization, and 
sink them deep in the depths of hell, for the 
starving have no use for them, and we'll take 
the savage state that knows no hunger except 
in the time of famine. 



X. 



Limit the ownership of land, be it arable, 
grazing, timber, or any other kind, to 160 acres. 
As no one shall own more than $100,000 worth 
of property all told, this 160 acres will have to 
be reduced as we get near to the centres of 
population. This will still give the owner of 
such convenient land an advantage over those 
living further out, who will always be willing 
to exchange should the first rather follow the 
coarser grades of farming to dairying or garden- 
ing. 



CONFISCATION. 61 

Neither is there any reason why the owning 
of great sections of timber land by one or two 
men should be necessary to the running of saw- 
mills and supplying the people with lumber. 
The mills are capable of doing just as good 
work if the fifty quarter sections are owned by 
fifty men as the} r are if owned by one man. And 
the waste of timber seen on ever} 7 hand where- 
ever you find a mill owned and operated by 
capitalists would have been unknown if there 
had been an individual owner to each quarter 
section. The wanton waste of this breed of the 
capitalist, in his hurry to pile up, would have 
been impossible had his mill been a " custom" 
mill, to saw the timber from your quarter sec- 
tion and mine instead of his fifty or five hun- 
dred. And the poor unskilled laborer would not 
have to go to make room for the chinaman, 
or that member of a worthless tribe who sold 
his "claim" to the "company" for so much 
and the promise of a job. The small owner 
cannot afford the waste of the large one. His 
income will not be so great that he can afford 
to waste the principal from which it comes. 
As to any friction about whose turn it is to run 
his timber through, it is only necessary to say 
that the business will be then carried on by 
those who are now doing the labor, and it will 
be no worse to accept wages from the man on 
the neighboring claim for helping him to make 
lumber than it was to accept wages from the 
man who was dethroned, and he will probably 



62 CONFISCATION. 

pay you as much as you could make running 
your own logs through. 

If this is not satisfactory, sell out at once to 
one of the many that are waiting to buy, and 
go, for you will not find anything in what we 
are advocating that interferes in the least with 
the liberty of the individual. Some may think 
differently, but then they are the ones who 
brought all eyes to the window to see what was 
going on in the street. 

And as you travel on you will miss the once 
eager dog at the farm house by the way, and no 
palsied hand will be lifting the corner of the 
curtain as you are passing by, for the tramp 
has disappeared, and the rare survivor and in- 
curable will be doing it on bread and water, for 
he must be a useless thing not to have drawn 
his last breath with his compatriot at the other 
end of the scale. 

The farmer who has children that are not of 
age when the new arrangement goes into force 
will see great hardship in the 160-acre law. He 
intended to give this piece of land to one son 
and that piece to another, and so on. He would 
give each of these sons more, but some one else 
owns the rest of the county thereabouts, and 
these, say, 160-acre tracts, are the best he can do. 
Leaving out of the question whether his sons 
can locate alongside of himself or not, and con- 
fining ourselves to their chance of being able 
to get 160 acres, which is the vital point in the 
whole matter, he must see that, if he must sur- 



CONFISCATION. 63 

render his excess and all others must do the 
same, there would be more land to take up than 
there are people to take it. We are in a Repub- 
lic, Mr. Farmer, and the interest of the many 
who have called at your door call on you to 
disgorge with the rest. 

When we come to the land in the mountains 
we find that it averages poor, yet the 160-acre 
law must be applied there also. To allow more 
would be to give an opening to the smart one, 
who would take advantage as he has always done; 
and as the country is pretty well tired of him 
we will save future complications by tying him 
down to 160 acres like the rest. The mountain 
farmer or rancher, with rare exceptions, gets 
his income from the raising of pork or beef 
animals,which are rarely confined to the owner's 
premises, but are allowed to roam and graze 
where they will, at times as far as forty and 
fifty miles away from where they belong. And 
as the mountaineer makes little if any provi- 
sions for the barn feeding of his animals, out- 
side of one or two milk cows and his few work 
animals, and these last only through the work 
season and the bad weather of whatever winter 
the locality may have, he will not find his 
business of raising meat for the market cur- 
tailed in any respect. Should he need more 
hay or grain ground, or ground for orchards or 
gardens, he will always find it inside of his 
160-acre inclosure, for there are none yet among 
them who knows the possibilities of a 160-acre 



64 : : sfescasios 

h under the plow. And as none has yet 
been forced to put the plow into outside ground, 
it can he taken for granted that they never will. 
Where, then, is the reason why this class of 
farmers should, be allowed title to more land 
than the others ? The range or grazing ground 
among the hills and along the water bow 
will still be open to their animals, and instead 
of the proposed change injuring their business, 
]t will, in tL - ?f cheap barb-wire, stop the 

".tie ting and speculative grabber 

i crippling : lesfci "together, a 

not unknown to some who have tried in a 

small way to make a living from cattle raisi _ 

.ierefore, no reason why the farmer 

in the hills should be allowed more land than 

his less favored brother in the valleys and plains 

w. He must fall into line with the : 
and, as he takes his place at the foot the 
ssembled multitude of liberated slaves, sees a 
Heam of scorn in the eves of the once mightv 
railroad king as this poorrelati: /.stupon 

his not:; t 

But it is not in a brave - le to humiliate 
a fallen enemy, and the order to break ranks 
is given, and the ex-slave and ex-master mingle 
. T:her, and depart to work out a destiny com- 
mon to both. 



In the preceding pages we have briefly tried 

show that Confiscation is the only peaceable 

way that is now open to us by which the people 



CONFISCATION. 65 

can again obtain possession of their country. 
And we have tried to convey an idea of how its 
principle should be applied, and we will now 
turn our attention to its workings, and show, 
as briefly as possible, how easy it is for the 
people to be prosperous when they have control 
of their country's resources. 

There is not a railroad in the country that 
would not be taxed to its utmost in carrying 
settlers io the forfeited lands; and the work of 
the land agent and boomer, the uphill work of 
the town or section in trying to build them- 
selves up by advertising far and near, and the 
hauling of cars full of exhibition pumpkins 
crossways and lengthways of the land, would be 
needless. Government land, be it County, State 
or United States, never requires booming in 
these days of the anxious home-seeker, and 
never will again. 

At present when a new section becomes at- 
tractive there is a rush into it, and then the 
rush slacks up with an air-brake suddenness. 
The speculator has got there and pitched his 
tent, and his $100 to $500-acre signs — part down, 
the rest at 8 per cent. — has taken possession, 
and the stream is turned aside and goes else- 
where. And then the pumpkin, with its 8 per 
cent, tags plastered all over it, is put aboard 
and hauled through the country on its mission 
of deceiving the innocent. 

With the land speculator out of the way, and 
no expenses outside of office fees, there would 



66 CONFISCATION. 

be a steady increase of population wherever 
there is agricultural land, until the last acre is 
in possession of an actual settler, whose home 
would be on the place. (The principle which 
allows a man living in New York, or somewhere 
else, to own land in California, or somewhere 
else, should set every law-maker to scratching 
his head to see if he cannot get an idea out of 

it.) 

And do not plague yourselves about the nu- 
merosity of the new settler, and where the whole 
of him is to find a market. We are trying to 
get rid of the pauper, and whoever heard of a 
farm, free of the 8 per cent, night-mare, being 
the breeding place of such as he? Whatever 
else happens to the farmer he at least is sure of 
enough to eat. Wheat may be down; cattle 
without buyers; eggs a drug; potatoes left to 
rot in the ground; milk wasting like water, and 
not ten cents in money on the premises, but 
the owner is not starving. The dude may not 
see a brother in him, and he will be denied 
entrance to the Inner Circle when Major domo 
McAllister sees him in the rear. But he has 
weight, and looks as if trying to get away with 
this year's crop, to make room for the next, 
agrees with him; and if he thinks now and 
again of the days of the hungry tramp it must 
be that the undertaking has proportions he 
little dreamed of. 

But he will have a market. What causes him 
to need one? This. That he may be able to 



CONFISCATION. 67 

get that which he does not produce or make 
himself. And is there not some one else pro- 
ducing or making those very things, and who 
needs what the farmer alone produces or makes? 
If yes, then we have found the whole secret of 
what we call business — two producers or makers 
of different articles making an exchange one 
with the other. Stop that exchange, and there 
would be no manufacturing; we would all be 
living off raw nature once more, and our ball- 
games would give way to the pelting of cocoa- 
nuts and hanging by our tails. 

XI. 

The opening of these forfeited lands would 
be the salvation of that pitiable creature, the 
victim of the 8 per cent, grind. The homeless 
wanderer can get shade and shelter from the 
burning sun and driving storm, and with these 
is content, for he has long since resigned am- 
bition to those who are willing to continue the 
hopeless struggle; but the man, on the 8 per 
cent, treadmill, who has not yet acknowledged 
defeat, has no way of escape from the glare of 
the master's eye, except, by self-murder or the 
pauper's grave. There is nothing that excites 
our hatred against the infamous laws of our 
times as much as does the sight of this brave 
man struggling against the fate that is crush- 
ing him, and whose patriotism will soon be 
kindred to that of the Russian serfs, if it does 



6 N CONFISCATION. 

not go to the other extreme and make him a 
nihilist or some other brand of the political 
desperado. [1 was from this quarter, forge 
not, that the old flint locks came, " whose report 
was heard around the world," and the serf will 
r be his model, for the old spirit has still 
enough of life left for another blair :hese 

oppressors will find to their awful c 
The burdens wbich these people are stagger- 
ing under can be easily imagined wh 
known that they have been paying interest on 
mortgages for years that the places would not 
now sell for, even after they were improved by 
years of labor and the outlay of much mc: 
In the San Joaquin valley, for instance, there 
are homesteads by the thousands that will not 
sell for what they are mortgaged for, and the 
^ordinary spectacle - witnessed in the 
of San Francisco last year of a bank having 
to close because it could not sell out the valley 
farmers for the mortgages due it. Of course 
ise farmers obtained money from the bank, 
and the justice of. the bank's claim is not what 
we are now trying to get at, but to show that if 
we had the laws that belong to a republic the 
people would not be the victims of bankers or 
any one else. Had they been allowed in the 
first place to take possession of all unimproved 
land without having to give up the saving- : 
years to some land grabber, whose theft was au- 
thorized and sustained by law, and then loaded 
down with interest obligations, they would have 




CONFISCATION. 69 

had no more trouble in keeping their land 
than they would in keeping an arm or a leg. 

With every one limited to lt)0 acres there 
would be so much thrown open to settlement 
that it would practically wipe out all mortgages 
on land, for the occupant of mortgaged prem- 
ises could give his owner the option of accept- 
ing what would be a fair price under the new 
conditions, and if it were refused then the oc- 
cupant could simply back his wagon up, put his 
portables on and drive to some of the Govern- 
ment land nearest to him. 

And it should not be so difficult to get the 
fencing and the lumber for the few small build- 
ings that would answer till he could get better, 
and, once started, his condition would be a steady 
improvement, the interest he now pays remain- 
ing on the premises where it is made. At pres- 
ent there are the usual fences and buildings 
put up when the land is bought (part down, the 
rest at 8 per cent.), and these are the only im- 
provements, outside of vine and tree growth, 
that can be made; the wear of time even cannot 
be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to 
spare for repairs or improvements, and even 
the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to decent 
clothing for himself and wife and other depend- 
ants that is not to be thought of while he is 
loaded down with that bane of modern life, 
interest obligations. 

The cost of moderately sized buildings would 
of course depend on circumstances, but it should 



70 CONFISCATION. 

not exceed a few hundred dollars; and as it 
would be a more profitable investment fori a 
county to help a settler, that is already on the 
ground, to get a start, than to spend the money 
trying to get him there, as is the practice now, 
there can be no serious reason why the voters 
should not authorize their local Government to 
extend the necessary aid, and make it optional 
with the borrower whether he shall pay in 
money or work; the length of time and other 
details to be governed by circumstances, but no 
interest to be charged. If this last causes some 
apparent loss, let it be charged to the old pump- 
kin fund. 

There are people of small means who have 
taken mortgages on land, and these must be 
protected, as we have already done in the case 
of like investors in paper-represented property. 
But if these small lenders are already owners 
of one hundred and sixty acres they must make 
the best terms they can with their debtors, for 
it is a cardinal idea of this needed readjustment 
that no one shall own more than 160 acres. 
But if the lender does not own that amount of 
land, he can get and hold title as at present. 



The result of the proposed change being to 
keep the income of the whole country within 
its own borders, it follows that every section 
must find itself with an abundance of capital 
such as was never known to them before, giv- 
ing them the means to carry on improvements 



CONFISCATION. 71 

that are entirely beyond them now. At the 
present time, too, if a laborer, through errors 
of judgment, should lose the savings of his 
years of youth and strength, he can rarely re- 
cover the ground lost, and finds that paying 
his way from day to day thereafter is all he can 
do, and when his work days are gone for good 
he must either go to the poor-house or be cared 
for by his relations, whose own load is about 
all they can bear up under. With the income 
kept where it is made all this would be changed, 
for then, instead of having work only a part of 
the time, and poor wages besides, the laborer, 
when his work for private parties gave out, 
could get work from the local Government, 
which always has it to give, and the money to 
pay for it. And should a laborer here and there, 
through some unforeseen cause, be forced by 
poverty and age to accept food and shelter that 
he cannot pay for, his relations can provide for 
him, for the getting of the mere food and cloth- 
ing will not be the momentous question that it 
is now. And this power of the local Govern- 
ment to give work will save many a one from 
a fate that should never overtake the honest 
and willing. 

Pauperism and crime can never be eliminated 
from society, any more than the susceptibility 
to sickness and disease can be eliminated from 
flesh and blood, but as civilization grows older 
its accumulating wisdom should be more than 
a match for poverty, the parent germ of both 



72 CONFISCATION. 

pauperism and crime: but the discouraging fact 
is that these two diseases of civilized society 
are advancing faster than civilization itself, 
and we build larger poor houses and jails, and 
then sit down and nurse the hideous disorders, 
as if they were the incurable rot of leprosy 
instead of being the result of economic laws 
that allow the able to rob the weak. 

There is not a county or State but what has 
plenty of work had it the money to do it. The 
question of good roads is becoming prominent, 
but if they are ever built under our present 
system of economics they will be built by slave 
labor pure and simple. It is absolutely out of 
the question for the people to raise the money 
for running the Government ; pay interest on 
bonds : pay for the bonds themselves ; pay 
pensions; carry on the costly work of giving 
the whole country macadamized roads, and 
care for the millionaire, and remain free at the 
same time. 

Government expenses 

Pensions. 

Interest on bonds. 

Matured bonds. 

Macadamized roads. 

Care of millionaire. 

To think of carrying such a load and remain 
free is madness. 

We are contending that the coun try is already 
crushed with debt : that she is saddled with 
such a tremendous load, that, like the mortgaged 



CONFISCATION. 73 

farm, improvement and progress is utterly out 
of the question. We have the resources for any 
and every improvement that the country needs, 
hut they are wasted and squandered paying 
interest to foreign capitalists, and supporting 
our mushroom growth of millionaire parasites, 
who are the cause of our poverty of capital, and 
the foreigners' ability to lend us money. 

Do away with interest paying and the mil- 
lionaire, and the required roads could be com- 
menced at once, and as for the Nicaragua canal, 
we would make as light of it as does the farmer 
in hoeing a hill of beans. 

XII. 

The silver interest asserts that we will never 
stop our headlong rush to the devil if we do 
not get free coinage of silver. Silver, like pork 
or potatoes, is something for sale, and its owners 
have given up their whole attention to finding- 
it a market. Whoever heard of J. P. Jones 
interesting himself in anything except silver. 
Never in all of his twenty years of public life 
did he show that he was anything more than 
u a man from one of the silver States/' Ever 
and always whenever he tills the air with his 
noise, you have only to look and there you will 
find him still knocking at the public treasury 
for a customer that already has had enough of 
him. 



74 CONFISCATION. 

He ha? become a monomaniac on silver, and, 
although one of the principal owners of the 
Mariposa land grant, will not open it up be- 
cause it is silver he wants and the grant only 
shows gold. It is this dementia that secures 
him a life-lease of the Senatorship from 
Nevada. For Nevada has only one interest, 
and that is silver. Silver is her wool, her 
cotton, her wheat, her coal, her iron, her lum- 
ber, her manufactures. It made her a State. 
It made her first representative to Congress 
and her last. It made Jones — Jones the 
drummer whose one sample is silver, who 
talks of silver, who sings of silver, who dreams 
liver, and who gets his inspirations of the 
past, present, and future as he looks down the 
shaft of his silver mine in Nevada. 

Never did the tail of the dog work harder 
than does this little bob-tailed thing called sil- 
ver, that we find moving around among our 
legs, trying to trip us up every time the politi- 
cal procession makes a move. 

There is distress because there is not money 
enough in circulation, say these peddlers of 
silver. It is a well understood fact that every 
sound bank in the country has idle money in 
its vaults looking for investment. 

Money is precisely like the laborer — it, too, is 
on the lookout for work. Show money where 
it can make interest, and it will come out of 
those vaults as quick as the hungry laborer 
will answer the knock at his door. 



CONFISCATION. 75 

Whatever distress the laborer is suffering, 
however, be sure that the millionaire owner of 
that idle money feels it not. His belly is well 
filled and his back well covered, and he knows 
nothing of the jolt of the box-car as he listens 
to the rhythm of the wheels of his Pullman 
sleeper. And it matters little to this million- 
aire, this flower of a foreign clime, when his 
increase sets in again. He has millions, a 
word we little comprehend the meaning of, and 
he will never know distress, any more than 
the laborer will know plenty again while this 
vampire of progress is permitted to survive. 
But the time must come when labor will get 
to work again for a few months each year, 
the usual thing now, to produce the needed 
stock of necessaries for the country, and then 
he will see the man of millions step off and col- 
lect his usual toll, and enough besides to make 
good any shrinkage in the principal. This 
owner of immense capital, this traveler in the 
Pullman, who makes his regular rounds 
through the country collecting toll off every 
laborer in every section, preparatory to his 
flight to Europe, is twin brother to the great 
land owner, and there is no hope for our coun- 
try until both are legally or otherwise extermi- 
nated. 

We could undo the capitalist by making inter- 
est illegal, as this would force him to draw on 
his principal. We do not object, however, to 



76 CONFISCATION. 

the interest capital receives. Banks have no 
enemy in this proposed change, and we suspect 
either the motives or the judgment of those 
whose stock in trade is a howl against banks, 
and what they call usury. Money has its place 
in civilization, and the hank where it is dealt 
in is a shop just as much as is the dry goods 
store or grocery, and is entitled to its profits 
just the same. If a man ec . -~ he should 

be allowed to charge something for its use the 
same as for the wagon he made or the house 
he built. Xeither the wagon nor house is any 
more the result of his labor than is this money,, 
and no one will question his right to charge 
something for the use of the first two. It is 
here where the banks are of service — the man 
with money takes it to a place — the bank — 
where the man who wishes to hire it knows 
where to look for it. Good sense will not deny 
a market to a man with potatoes; neither will 
it deny him a market for any other product of 
his labor, be it capital or what not. Interest 
is wrong only when it is being drawn by a mil- 
lionaire, who. of course, did not earn the prin- 
cipal. Those millions is where the danger lies, 
when found with an individual owner, whether 
they are in bank vaults or on the shelves of the 
millionaire merchant. Besides, it is a slow pro- 
jess, this breaking up the millionaire owner of 
something by stopping his interest. This earth 
should be ours while we are alive to enjoy it. 
and there is no hope of getting it by applying 



CONFISCATION. 77 

the graduated tax idea to either land or capital. 
When a curse like poverty can be removed the 
quicker it is done the better. 

Interest is wrong (we are not justifying ex- 
tortion) when it is drawn by the millionaire, 
not only because his labor did not earn the 
principal, but because he has the power to take 
it out of the country where it was earned. And 
he does take it out thereby impoverishing the 
country of the capital that is needed to carry 
on developments that should never be allowed 
to stop. 

There is, as has been said, idle money now, 
but the millionaire owners care nothing for the 
general welfare, and the people cannot get this 
idle money because they find it impossible to 
pay interest for its use, and carry at the same 
time the fearful burdens they are now loaded 
with. 

An individual can be forced to submit to any 
kind of terms when his necessities are driving 
him. When those necessities are satisfied he 
must stop and let development go, for he cannot 
stand the terms. He is willing to go ahead, but 
he simply finds his physical being unequal to 
the task. As it is with one individual so it is 
with a nation of individuals. They also can 
be forced to submit to any kind of terms when 
their necessities are driving them, and when 
their necessities are supplied they too must 
stop and let development so, for they cannot 
stand the terms. In other words, the capacity 




t b CONFISCATION. 

of people, singly or collectively, is limited, and 
if they are compelled to exhaust that capacity 
in supporting millionaire parasites at home, 
and paying for their extravagance abroad, they 
cannot improve themselves or develop their 
country. 

Complicity, then, and negligence on the part 
of our law makers has made a few men the 
absolute owners of the financial or money 
branch of our economics, and the people find 
it impossible to move except when these mas- 
ters find it to their interests to let them. 

Progress under such conditions will never 
be more than a dream. 

We could find use for all the capital that is 
now in the country, and all that has been and 
is being taken out of it, but we should first 
loosen the grip of these legalized despoilers and 
see how far what we have got would go before 
we talk of issuing more, which would soon turn 
up missing like the rest. 

XIII. 

AVe hear much about what we are losing by 
the balance of trade being against us, but not a 
word about that other floodgate through which 
our capital is rushing, namely, our millionaire 
class making its purchases abroad, and their 
other expenses while living among the foreign 
birds of a like feather. Their idle money is 
left here for investment. They do not look to 




CONFISCATION. 79 

that quarter for income. The world over there 
is under the feet of a few as it is here, and the 
result is the same — idle money looking for 
interest. 

No less an authority than the late Ward Mc- 
Allister has said that up to last year two hun- 
dred and eighty American women had married 
foreign titles. 

$1,000,000,000 was the war indemnity de- 
manded of France by the Germans, and so vast 
is this sum that the civilized world believed the 
Germans wanted to retain possession of the con- 
quered country and demanded what the French 
could not pay. Yet the amount of American 
money it took to buy those two hundred and 
eighty titles is far in excess of that war indem- 
nity. At four millions each it would exceed 
$1,000,000,000. But the average cost must 
have been more than four millions. One of 
our millionaire flour mill owners, who is a mere 
tallow candle in this constellation, paid $7,000,- 
000 for the title his daughter is now wearing. 
And this $7,000,000 must have been a mere 
bagatelle compared to what it cost Huntington 
to get the lively Hatzfeldt. The poor flour mill 
man could not have paid that fellow's " debts 
of honor." This buying of titles, however, is 
but one way by which the millionaires are beg- 
garing the American people. So much of their 
time is now 7 spent over there that they have 
come to look upon the United States as their 
rented farm, and Europe as the place where 



BO CONFISCATION. 

they, in their high roller way, must get rid of 
its income. Call to mind the millionaire fam- 
ilies who live a large part of their time in 
Europe. Call to mind those who have made 
pe their permanent home, with their in- 
iwn from the United States. Call to 
mind the great European estates, that have 
been firs 1 of their peasantry, and then 

leased by American mill hat they may 

have the exclusive right to shoot at something. 
Call 1 the New ' aire, 

who purchased an English estate, one to fit the 
title he is lick-spittling after, and where he can 
after ail s lis great London 

Daily and Monthly: all thre - and period- 

3j being a source of loss, that is made good 
by American earned money. Call all these 
things to mind, and if we are poor in capital 
have round the reason why ? 

Euro] Broadway of tb >ple, and 

they are there to squander money, not to make 
it. And the European visitor to our shores 
ike up the loss. He comes, looks at 
some of our landscape, Xiagara. the Yosemite, 
d \ is : iri : untry and home again. 

H:~ is but a drop to the ocean we lo=e. 

Need we wonder at our gold disappearing ? 
Ou r b o n d s a n d s - : • v e r n m e n t a n d e o r p o r a - 

tion, are scattered broadcast over the whole of 
Europe, and those decrepit titles, that were dy- 
ing out, have been put on their feet again by 
American money, and are now living off the 



CONFISCATION. 



81 



interest of American bonds of one kind or 
another. 

Nor should we have to borrow foreign capital. 
It is over a century since this government was 
established, and it is time we had enough cap- 
ital of our own. 

But the United States Treasury is, and has 
been for over thirty years, the clearing house 
for the foreign holders of American securities. 
We are a mortgaged nation, and the office of 
our National Treasury is the place of all others 
where our foreign owners should get their in- 
terest. We are still in possession of the office, 
however, and in this we are ahead of Egypt, 
but it will take much hair-splitting to show 
any substantial difference in the results. 

History does not contain, the imagination 
cannot evolve, a more damnable exhibition of 
incompetence than this failure of our scrub 
statesmen to extricate their country from the 
clutch of its foreign masters. 

Ruling one of the three principal gold pro- 
ducers of the world, they are compelled to resort 
to all the shifts known to the desperate bank- 
rupt in order to keep a few millions of it in the 
Treasury, and thereby save our whole monetary 
system from going to the dogs. For let us not 
delude ourselves; the moment the United States 
Treasury cannot give gold for its greenbacks, 
that moment will the history of the greenback 
begin to repeat itself. And we are not saving 
ourselves by making greenbacks lean on silver. 



82 CONFISCATION. 

They cannot be made stronger than the thing 
they lean on. Gold we must have as our stan- 
dard. 

We are in commercial relations with all na- 
tions, and the laws of trade are inexorable, and 
say: You must have money that is acceptable 
to those you buy from. Bring any other, and 
you can call the fifty cents it contains one hun- 
dred, but your laws are for the United States 
only, and you must accept the fifty cents or take 
back the mongrel that in your own barnyard 
crows so loud, for the United States has in- 
dorsed a swindle that she is powerless to en- 
force beyond her own borders. 

No law is necessary to make us take gold. 
Just out of the mine or just out of the mint, 
we want it — the whole world wants it. 

Finance, if not as old as the hills, is at least 
pretty near as old as the graves at the foot of 
them. There is nothing new to be learned re- 
garding her laws. And those laws do not shut 
out tin, copper, paper, rags, nails, or silver 
from being used as money as long as it is 
agreeable to the interested. But the wisdom of 
the world comes from her experience, and if 
she calls for gold money it is because she has 
never found a better. All other kinds fade be- 
fore it as fades the moon before the rising sun. 

There is but one central orb in the world's 
monetary systems, and that is Gold. And its 
satellites, paper or silver, will never be able to 
get out of their orbits where the fixed and un- 



CONFISCATION. 83 

alterable laws of the world's financial systems 
have placed them. Temporary disturbances 
may deceive the searcher, but he has mistaken 
his calling who cannot distinguish planets from 
the sun around which they are moving. 

The different governments of Europe, that 
are not gold producers, have gold as the basis 
of their monetary systems, and, what is more, 
the gold is there. The United States, that is a 
gold producer, would also have it as the basis 
of its monetary system, but this nation, the one 
independent nation that is an extensive and 
the leading producer of the metal that the en- 
lightened world approves of as making the best 
of all moneys, cannot retain enough of it to 
give future stability to her own currency. 

This nation, the greatest of to-day, or any 
day! 

This nation, that has given more to the rest 
of the world than it has ever received ! 

This nation — of all others on this earth— 
must be content with the money of the enslaved 
East Indian coolie ; must be content with the 
money of the decaying Chinaman ; must be 
content with the money of the half savage re- 
publics to the south of us ! 

This nation, whose chief magistrate is the 
embodiment of power never dreamed of by the 
Osesars and Napoleons in their palmiest days ! 
This nation, that is impregnable against the 
combined armies of the world, is being sapped 
and mined of its wealth under the very eyes of 



84 CONFISCATION. 

its driveling lawmakers, and silver is becoming 
the badge of its humiliation and inferiority ! 

XIV. 

The national debt of France is $7,000,000,000- 
This exceeds the combined national debts of 
the United States, England, and Germany. 

In territory, France is not as large as Cali- 
fornia. 

Her population is* 37,000,000 

The population of the United States 

is.. 65,000,000 

The population of England is 37,000,000 

The population of Germany is 40,000,000 

Total : 142..000..000 

The French navy is a fairly close second to 
that of England. 

Her army is as large as that of Germany. 

France, then, supports an army and navy of 
the first class, and" has only 37,000,000 people 
to do it with. And this same 37,000,000 people 
pays interest on a debt that is greater than 
that of the 142,000,000 people in the three 
countries named. Yet there is no wail of dis- 
tress, such as we are familiar with, heard in 
this France, with its great army and navy, and 
its fabulous interest-bearing debt. 

What is the secret of it ? 

*The writer is not within hundreds of miles of works of 
reference ; but these figures are substantially correct. The 
quibbler, however, is welcome to anything he may find. 



CONFISCATION. 85 

France is the greatest producer of luxeries 
in the world, and, of course, has the rich the 
world over for her customers ; and she is a na- 
tion of small owners, her resources, land and 
all else, being subdivided among her people to 
an extent unknown elsewhere. This is only 
half the secret. 

There is a natural increase of wealth in every 
country. Keep that natural increase in the 
country where it is made, and there will always 
be a surplus left after the mere live and wear 
expenses are paid, and this surplus can be used 
either to support an army or to build macad- 
amized roads. This then is the other half, 
without which she would be where we are : 
France legislates to keep her wealth in her own 
country — and her loss on that canal is only one 
plum out of her heeping bushel. 

The foreign sapper and miner does no work 
on French soil. His field of operation is the 
whole American continent, beginning in Canada 
and on down through, without a skip, till he 
reaches Magellan and the Horn, scattering his 
due bills all the way. 

The French law-maker, in spite of his clatter, 
is without a peer, and he dwarfs none so much 
as our own, who will become the butt of his 
own sneer if he ever gets his eyes open. 

This foreign master of the art of governing 
legislates in the interests of his own people, who 
are the only source of his contry's power or 
greatness, and he leaves the income of the large 



Ob CONFISCATION. 

farm or small one where it is made. And when 
the issuing of bonds is the only alternative he 
issues them in sizes those small incomes can 
buy. 

Their labor pays the debt in the end, and it 
is their interests that are first consulted when 
profits from bond issues are considered. He 
makes the size of the bond fit their ability to 
buy, and not that of the millionaire syndicate, 
as is the case in this misgoverned land, where 
the matchless ignorance and complicity of the 
law-maker is made to serve the matchless cor- 
ruption and greed of its millionaire master. 

No French syndicate makes its five to ten 
per cent, profits off every issue of bonds. 

Thousands among our toilers could have 
secured their ten-dollar savings could they have 
bought Government bonds of that denomina- 
tion, but they could not, and were forced to 
become the victims of swindling bankers. 

Individual greed cares nothing for its victims 
as they are thrown on the streets and its ways. 

When this enterprising foreigner, with his 
surplus capital, the result of wise laws, started 
for Panama to do a much needed work for this 
Western world, that this great gold producing 
country could not find the capital to do, our 
blackmailers worked the Monroe Doctrine on 
him, and all the while he was quieting the ras- 
cals, the sappers and miners were splitting their 
sides at our treasury door. 

Congress is opened by a chaplain. It should 



CONFISCATION. 87 

be opened by a physician and a warrant — bibs 
for the drooling chins of some and the rest to 
jail. 



CONCLUSION. 

A policy that keeps our increase of wealth in 
the country, and prevents it from lodging in a 
few hands, can work no injury whatever. No 
enterprise worthy of notice will languish for the 
want of the necessary capital. The savings 
banks are the depositories of the people, and 
the capital of those institution in all the cities 
of the country exceeds that of the commercial 
or capitalistic banks, and the *' statements " of 
the savings banks should dispel any fears as to 
whether capital can be concentrated afterit once 
gets into the hands of the people. $50,000,000 
is the assets of more than one savings bank in 
the City of New York. And our own San 
Francisco has its Hibernia and other banks of 
its kind, with from $5,000,000 to $30,000,000 
of capital. And when it is remembered that 
the total deposits of an individual in most of 
those institutions is not allowed to exceed 
$3,000, we can see that the people will not fail 
us as " concentrators " when their help is 
needed. 

Those statements also show whether those of 
small means are for concealing it, or for put- 
ting it into ths hands of competent managers 
for investment. And if these competent man- 



88 CONFISCATION. 

agers approve of an enterprise they will not 
neglect their client's interests by refusing to 
make the required loan. 

At present, they do not seek investment out- 
side of corporate limits, and, of course, the 
money they have been intrusted with, must be 
about all invested, and cannot be called idle 
money, or there could be no interest paid io its 
owners. 

There will be no friction in the management 
of industrial enterprises when this savings- 
bank depositor makes a direct investment. 
The voter at the polls has his say as to who 
shall fill a political office, but he cannot inter- 
fere in the work of the office itself. Neither 
will our investor have the right or power to in- 
terfere. In short, the modern industrial world 
would go to pieces even now, if it was run by 
its million owners, instead of by its appointed 
or elected superintendent. 

These small depositors are either laborers or 
in " business;" business that they would en- 
large if business of all kinds was not already 
overdone. It is not to be inferred from this 
that the new law will cause factories to run day 
and night, or keep the merchant's door always 
on the swing. There will be an increase of 
business surely; but this world is not like a 
goose whose liver we are after. Her capacity 
to absorb what we make or produce is limited, 
and when we reach that limit, let us be con- 
tent, and chain & down Greed for the moment, 



CONFISCATION. 89 

that we may look out and see how beautiful is 
this world whereon we live, when freed from 
the crack of the master's whip. 



Through Confiscation alone can the people 
regain their liberty and possession of their re- 
sources. 

A readjustment means justice to all. 

Without it the days of the republic are num- 
bered, and the overwhelming disaster to man- 
kind will mark the burial place of the aspira- 
tions of its founders, and the latest conquest of 
individual greed. 

That disaster cannot be averted by Grover 
Cleveland, the head of the Democratic party, 
finding a foreign market for a few more ship- 
loads of our products. And never should the 
oppressed of other lands find an enemy here to 
take their bread. Pinching nature has not made 
wolves of this people that they should go and 
show their teeth among the cabins and hovels of 
Europe. Theirs is but a crust now, and a judg- 
ment should wither the hand that would take 
it from them. 

This disaster cannot be averted by Thomas 
B. Reed, the idol and recognized leader of the 
Republican party, forcing the producers of 
those few ship loads of products to consume 
them themselves. The whole could be dropped 
to the bottom of the sea, or sold for their value 
a hundred fold, and it would not stay the doom 
of the Republic one swing of the pendulum. 



90 CONFISCATION. 

This disaster cannot be averted by Robert G. 
Ingersoll — another idol — advising the mil- 
lionaire to be extravagant. Or by taking the 
labor-saving machinery away from the people, 
and keeping them longer at their toil, as this 
humbug has suggested. 



THIS IS THE AGE OF BEEF. 

Our leaders are incompetent. Argument here 
is needless. We have plenty of everything, 
and plenty of hunger at the same time, which 
shows mismanagement. Our leaders, therefore, 
must be incompetent. Nor should the blame 
of this be charged to the people. Statecraft, 
like the prescribing of medicine or the practice 
of law, is a profession, and the unlearned in 
their ways is at the mercy of the quacks of all 
three. 

When none but quacks offer their services to 
the State a selection must be made, and the 
people cannot be held to account for choosing 
quacks when there was nothing to choose from 
but quacks. 

Whatever physical characteristics distin- 
guishes the genius of leadership from the ordi- 
nary man; whether it is long legs or short; 
long nose or pug; big heads or little, one thing 
is certain — history tells you on her every page 
that leadership is never found in combination 
with beef. Cleveland and Reed! How they 



CONFISCATION. 91 

stew and swelter in positions they cannot fill. 
How these Jonahs have grown till they have 
become the whale itself. How their fat will 
spot the pages to come, and float on the sea 
where the Republic went down. 

And Ingersoll — let us not forget Ingersoll — the 
thumber over of past woes, whose five hundred 
dollar opera ticket identifies the class to which 
he now belongs, and proves his success as a 
fifteenth century reformer. The peeple made 
and keep up the acquaintance of this man by 
way of the ticket office, but instead of consider- 
ing him as they would any other footlight per- 
former, who had struck a paying vein and was 
working it for all it was worth, and who can 
only be heard at so much per ticket, they have 
come to look upon the character he has been 
acting as the man himself, and their friend 
who would make their cause his own. 

No fee is collected at the door of the little 
church that is found along the byways of every 
Christian land, and its humble preacher can be 
heard free of cost. But abuse of this follower 
and disciple of Jesus, whose teachings are in 
no way responsible for the crimes of Individual 
Greed, has been the source of large profits to 
this man, who has even gone so far as to tell 
his hearers not to give a dollar to the support 
<3f a preacher — meaning, doubtless, while you 
could see his performance for half the money. 

This man, whose audience is world-wide, 
uses his great opportunity for helping mankind 



92 CONFISCATION. 

by inclosing the scenes of former struggles, and 
collecting the gate receipts. 

This bogus friend of the people answers the 
cry of distress that is heard all over this boun- 
tiful land by a shrug, and a nod to the master 
to drop a few more crumbs, as if the people 
were hungry dogs under the table. 

Ingersoll a friend of the oppressed ? He 
would render justice to the enslaved toiler by 
lengthening his hours of labor. 

A sham reformer, who would destroy the In- 
quisition of this day by plunging his spotless 
blade into an Inquisition whose sun has set, 
never to rise again. 

Ingersoll of the tender soul, who shows the 
sincerity of his exhibition-tears for the perse- 
cuted dead by riding, rough-shod, over the sen- 
sibilities of the blameless living. 

"Warrior Ingersoll, furiously charging up and 
down an abandoned battle-field, rattling the 
bleaching bones of a dead and gone enemy — 
for an admission fee. 

Ingersoll the capper, who would turn all eyes 
to the ashes of a burned-out hell, while another 
is being dug in our rear. 

CLEVELAND— REED— INGERSOLL, 

THE THREE 

CAGLIOSTROS. 



CONFISCATION 



RJt OUTlilfiE 



BY WILLIAM GREENWOOD 



Those palaces on the Nob Hills of these United States are 
the toadstools of the decay that is going on in this Republic 
to-day.— Page 42. 



fl. 






PRICE, 25 CENTS 



SAN FRANCISCO 

JAMES H. BARRY, PRINTER, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET 

1895 



219 89 



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